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HOMILIES 



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DR. PAUL CARUS. 



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PKEFACE. 



THESE Homilies of Science first appeared as editorial 
articles in The Open Court. The principle that pervades 
them is to preach an ethics that is based upon truth and upon 
truth alone. Truth is a correct statement of fact. Truth ac- 
cordingly is demonstrable by the usual methods of science, and 
whenever a statement appears to be incorrect or insufficient every- 
body has a right to examine it, either for refutation or verification, 
and in this sense the book was named " Homilies of Science." 

There is a difficulty in writing Homilies of Science. This 
difficulty consists mainly in the fact that they must appeal through 
thought to the will ; they must convey sentiment without being 
sentimental ; they should not employ emotional arguments and 
they have to dispense with all the charms of traditional religious 
poetry. Moreover they stand in opposition to and have to counter- 
act a very popular error, viz., the view that a full knowledge of the 
laws of this world would rather dispose a man to become immoral 
than to purify and ennoble his soul. The belief is not uncommon 
that a moral teacher has either to suppress some of the facts or to 
add some fictitious facts. The rules of morality it is often sup- 
posed, can be justified through pious fraud alone. 

If that were so, morality would stand in contradiction to 
science and the holiest feelings, the deepest wants, the highest 
aspirations of mankind would be mere illusions. 

The " Homilies of Science" are not hostile towards the estab- 
lished religions of traditional growth. They are hostile towards 
the dogmatic conception only of these religions. Nor are they 



VI HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

hostile towards freethought. Standing upon the principle of avow- 
ing such truths alone as can be proved by science, they reject that 
kind of freethought only which refuses to recognise the authority 
of the moral law. 

The Religion upheld in these Homilies may be called Natural 
Religion to the extent that it takes its stand upon the facts of na- 
ture, that is, the experiences of life or the data furnished us by the 
world in which we live. It may be called the Religion of Science in 
so far as the statement of these facts must be done with scientific 
exactness and critical circumspection. It may be called the Religion 
of Humanity, in so far as it finds its aim in the elevation, progress, 
and amelioration of mankind. It may be called Cosmic Religion 
in so far as its ethics rests upon the consideration that every indi- 
vidual is a part of the great whole of All-existence. It may be 
called the Religion of Life, for it is concerned with the salvation 
of the human soul, so as to make man fit to live and to meet the 
duties of life. Or it may be called the Religion of Immortality, 
for it teaches us how through obedience to the moral law our lives 
can become building-stones in the temple of humanity which will 
remain forever as living presences in future generations. It pre- 
serves the human soul, even though the body die, and gives it life 
everlasting. 

* * * 

Many a reader will ask, how did this peculiar combination of 
seemingly opposed ideas come about which are on the one hand so 
unflinchingly radical and iconoclastic and on the other hand so 
tenaciously conservative and religious ? The answer is, They de- 
veloped naturally ; they are the result of the author's life, and the 
product of his experiences. 

From my childhood I was devout and pious, my faith was as 
confident as that of Simon, whom, for his firmness, Christ called 
the rock of his church. On growing up, I decided to devote 
myself as a missionary to the service of Christianity. But alas ! 
inquiring into the foundations of that fortress which I was going 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. VII 

to defend, I found the whole of the building undermined. I grew 
unbelieving and an enemy to Christianity. Yet in the depth of 
my soul I remained thoroughly religious. I aroused myself and 
gathered the fragments from the wreck, which my heart had suf- 
fered. Instinctively I felt that some golden grain must be amongst 
the chaff. 

When my confidence in dogmatic Christianity broke down, 
I lamented the loss, but after I had worked my way through to 
clearness I saw that the pure gold is so much more valuable than 
the ore from which it is gained. I have lost the dross only, the 
slags and ashes, but my religious ideals have been purified. My 
life was such that I could not help becoming a missionary, but I 
became a missionary of that religion which knows of no dogmas, 
which can never come in conflict with science, which is based on 
simple and demonstrable truth. This religion is not in conflict 
with Christianity. Nor is it in conflict with Judaism or Moham- 
medanism, or Buddhism, or any other religion. For it is the goal 
and aim of all religions. 

I see now Christianity, and the other religions also, in another 
light. The old Christianity had to stand or fall with certain dog- 
mas. The new Christianity is identical with truth. It is no longer 
belief in a dead letter, but faith, a living faith in truth ; and no 
scientific progress will ever destroy it. 

Every religion has the tendency to drop all sectarianism and 
to develop into broad humanitarianism. Every religion will in its 
natural growth mature into a cosmical religion. 

How many thousand hearts investigate like me ! They have 

believed and doubted, they have criticised and condemned. And 

how many that winnow the wheat, lose the grain together with 

the chaff ! ^ 

* * 

I hope that wherever my work is inadequate, and I heartily 

wish it were better in every respect, others will come after me to 

do it better than I did. 

The Author. 



" Prove all things ; hold fast that which is good."— 5"/. Paul. 

" Free enquiry into truth from all points of view is the sole remedy against 
illusions and errors of any \i\v\.^.'" —Herder . 

"Let there be no compulsion in religion." — Koran. 

" The ink of the sage and the blood of the martyr have the same value in 
heaven." — Koran. 

" Ein Mensch ohne Wissenschaft ist wie ein Soldat ohne Degen, wie ein 
Acker ohne Regen ; er ist wie ein Wagen ohne Rader, wie ein Schreiber ohne 
Feder ; Gott selbst mag die Eselskopf nicht leiden." — Abrahatn a Sancta 
Clara, 

" Science ye shall honor 
Far from vainglorious pride. 
For God's are those who teach, 
And God's are those who aspire. 
He who science praises, praises God." — Koran, 

" God is an empty tablet upon which nothing is found but what thou hast 
written thyself." — M. Luther. 

"Despair alone is genuine atheism." — J. Paul Richter. 

" God is wherever right is done." — Schiller 

" The purpose of true religion should be to impress in the soul the prin. 
ciples of morality. I cannot conceive how it has come about that men, espe. 
cially the teachers of religion, could deviate so far from that purpose," — 
Leibnitz. 

The world order is the basis of ethics. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS GROWTH. 

PAGE. 

Is Religion Dead ? i 

To Fulfil Not to Destroy 4 

The Vocation 8 

Religion Based upon Facts 13 

The Religious Problem 18 

New Wine in Old Bottles 22 

The Revision of a Creed , 28 

The Religion of Progress 32 

PROGRESS AND RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

The Test of Progress 36 

The Ethics of Evolution 43 

Fairy-Tales and Their Importance 48 

The Value of Mysticism 52 

The Unity of Truth 58 

Living the Truth 63 

Thanksgiving-Day 68 

Christmas 71 

GOD AND WORLD. 

Revelation 75 

God 79 

Design in Nature 83 

The Conceptions of God 90 

Is God a Mind ? 99 

Is the Infinite a Religious Idea ? 108 

God, Freedom, and Immortality 113 

Prometheus and the Fate of Zeus 117 



X HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

THE SOUL AND THE LAWS OF SOUL-LIFE. 

PAGE. 

Enter Into Nirvana 121 

The Human Soul 127 

The Unity of the Soul 133 

Ghosts 137 

The Religion of Resignation 143 

The Religion of Joy 148 

The Festival of Resurrection. . . 151 

DEATH AND IMMORTALITY. 

The Conquest of Death » 155 

The Price of Eternal Youth 158 

Religion and Immortality 163 

Spiritism and Immortality ■ 166 

Immortality and Science 174 

Death, Love, Immortality 185 

FREETHOUGHT, DOUBT, AND FAITH. 

Freethought, its Truth and its Error 189 

The Liberal's Folly 195 

The Mote and the Beam 200 

Superstition in Religion and Science 206 

The Question of Agnosticism 213 

The Bible and Freethought 221 

Faith and Doubt 227 

The Heroes of Freethought 250 

ETHICS AND PRACTICAL LIFE. 

The Hunger After Righteousness 233 

Ethics and the Struggle for Life 239 

Render Not Evil for Evil 245 

Religion and Ethics 252 

The Ethics of Literary Discussion 256 

Sexual Ethics 260 

Monogamy and Free Love 263 

Morality and Virtue 269 

SOCIETY AND POLITICS. 

Aristocratomania 276 

Socialism and Anarchism 283 

Looking Forward . 288 

Womon Emancipation 294 

Do We Want a Revolution 298 

The American Ideal 305 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE 



IS RELIGION DEAD? 



One of the greatest historians of morals says : Re- 
Hgion has ceased to be the moving power in our na- 
tional and in our private life. Interest in theological 
discussions is nowhere to be found, not even in the 
churches. What do the people care for the religious 
issues of former days ? They are quite indifferent 
about the interpretation of Bible passages and the 
sacraments, which in former centuries caused sangui- 
nary wars among nations. And a great French phi- 
losopher announces the advent of an irreligious age, 
where creeds will disappear, where no church shall 
exist, and religion shall cease to be. 

Contemplating the habits and the life of our age, we 
are struck by a noticeable change in the general ten- 
dencies of men. It seems that everything has become 
more worldly, more realistic, and more practical. Yes, 
more practical ! and I should say there is no harm in 
being practical, if the ideal world be not lost in the 
realistic aims which we pursue, if our hearts be still 
aglow with the sacred fire of holy aspiration for purity, 
for honor, and above all, for truth ! Let us be practical, 
and let us more and more become so, in appl3dng the 
highest ideals to our everyday life and in realizing 
them ! 

The God of old Religion said through the mouth 
of one of his prophets : ''Lo, I make all things new." 
And a psalmist of the western world sings in one of 



2 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

his deepest lays : "There is no death — what seems so, 
is transition." Nature cannot die, it may undergo 
changes, but it will live forever. Nature is life, it is 
the fountain of eternal youth. 

Learn to understand the signs of the time. If you 
see the leaves turn yellow and red and shine in all 
colors, know that autumn is at hand. The leaves will 
fall to the ground and snow will soon cover the trees 
and woodlands and meadows. But when you see buds 
on the branches, although they may be few and the 
weather may be cold, still, know that spring is at the 
door, and will enter soon, filling our homes with flowers, 
with joyous life, and with love. 

The leaves of dogmatic opinion are falling thickly 
to the ground. How dreary looks the landscape, how 
bleak the sky ! How cold and frosty, how forlorn are 
the folds of the churches ! There is the end of religious 
life, you think ; the future will be empt}^ irreligiosity — 
without faith in the higher purposes of life, without 
ideals to warm and £11 our hearts, without hope for 
anything except the material enjoyments of the present 
life. 

And 5^et, my friends, observe the signs of the time ! 
There are buds on the dry branches of religious life 
which show that the sap is stirring in the roots of the 
tree of humanity. There are signs that the death- 
knell of the old creeds forebodes the rise of a new re- 
ligion. 

Everyone who knows that nature is immortal can 
see and feel it. A new religion is growing in the 
hearts of men. The new religion will either develop 
from the old creeds which now stand leafless and 
without fruit, which seem useless, as if dead, or it 
will rise from the very opposition against the old 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 3 

creeds, from that opposition which is made not in the 
name of frivolous cynicism, but in the name of honesty 
and truth. The beautiful will not be destroyed to- 
gether with the fantastic, nor the higher aspirations 
in life with supernatural errors. Though all the creeds 
may crumble away, the living faith in ideals will last 
forever. That which is good and true and pure, will 
remain — for that is eternal. 

The new religion which I see arising and which 
I know will spring forth as spontaneously and power- 
fully as the verdure of spring, will be the religion of 
humanity. It will be the embodiment of all that is 
sacred and pure and elevating. It will be realistic, for 
it loves truth. It will promote righteousness, for it 
demands justice. It will ennoble human life, for it 
represents harmony and beauty. 

The new religion that will replace the old creeds 
will be an ethical religion. And truly all the vital 
questions of the day are at bottom religious, all are 
ethical. They cannot be solved unless we dig down 
to their roots, which are buried in the deepest depths 
of our hearts — in the realm of religious aspirations. 

Life would not be worth living if it were limited 
merely to the satisfaction of our physical wants; if it 
were bare of all higher aspirations, if we could not 
fill our soul with a divine enthusiasm for objects that 
are greater than our individual existence. We must 
be able to look beyond the narrowness of our personal 
affairs. Our hopes and interests must be broader than 
life's short span ; they must not be kept within the 
bounds of egotism, or we shall never feel the thrill 
of a higher life. For what is religion but the growth 
into the realm of a higher life ? And what would the 
physical life be without religion? 



TO FULFIL NOT TO DESTROY. 



The greatest religious revolution which the world 
has ever seen was that of Christianity. From the 
standpoint of an impartial umpire, it must be con- 
fessed that the triumph of the Christian Faith has 
been the grandest in history. The founder of Chris- 
tianity, who died on the cross as an outlawed criminal, 
led the van of a new civilization. In his name kings 
and emperors reverently bowed and yielded to the de- 
mands of humaner ideals ; while the greatest philoso- 
phers, the princes of thought, brooded over his ethical 
doctrines. 

How can we explain the unparalleled success of 
Christianity ? It is due, undoubtedly, to the sublimity 
of Christ's ethics, to the gentleness and nobility of his 
person, to the kindness of his heart, to the wealth of 
his spiritual treasures, and to the poverty of his ap- 
pearance. But that is not all. Every business man 
knows that for success, not only ability is required, not 
only the solidity of one's goods, but the merchandise 
offered must also be in demand. 

No movement in history can be successful unless 
it is based upon a solid ethical basis, having in view 
the elevation and amelioration, not of a single class or 
nation, but of the human kind. Yet this is not all. 
A revolution must be needed; it must stand in de- 
mand. No revolution will endure unless the ethical 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 5 

idea by which it is animated Hes deeply rooted in the 
past. 

A successful revolution must be the result of evolu- 
tion ; and a successful revolutionist must combine two 
rare qualities, an unflinching radicalism and a strong 
conservativism. The ideal of a successful movement 
must open new and grand vistas for progress, but at 
the same time it must be the fulfillment of a hope, 
the realization of a prophecy. Thus it will shed its 
light on the ages past, which will now be understood 
as preliminary and preparatory endeavors to effect and 
to realize this ideal. 

We stand on the eve of another great religious 
revolution. Humanity has outgrown the old dogma- 
tism of the churches, and a new faith is bursting forth 
in the hearts of men, which promises to be broader 
and humaner than the narrow bigotry of old creeds. 
It promises to accord with science, for it is the very 
outcome of science ! It will teach men a new ethics 
— an ethics not founded on the authority of a power 
foreign to humanity, but upon nature, upon the basis 
from which humanity grew ; it will rest upon a more 
correct understanding of man and man's natural ten- 
dency to progress and to raise himself to a higher 
plane of work, and to a nobler activity. 

Science has undermined our religious belief, and 
beneath its critical investigations dogmas crumble 
away. But whatever science may undermine of ec- 
clesiastical creeds, it does not, and will not, prove 
subversive of the moral commandments of religion. 
Science will, after all, only purify the religious ideals 
of mankind, and will show them in their moral im- 
portance. The most radical criticism of science will 



6 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

always remain in concord with the reverent regard for 
the moral ideaL 

We believe in progress, and trust that man lives 
not in vain, that man's labor, if rightly done, will fur- 
ther the cause of humanity and make the world better 
— be it ever so little better — than it was. We aspire 
to a nobler future — and let me point out one import- 
ant subject which is too often overlooked, and which 
is indispensable to success. The success of ideals is 
impossible without a due respect for the ideas which 
are to be displaced. The triumph of a better future 
depends upon a due reverence for the merits of the 
past, or, in other words, we must know that the new 
view is the outcome of the old view. The ethical re- 
ligion of the future springs from the seed of past 
ecclesiastical religions. And if the latter appear to 
us as superstitious notions of a crude and strangely 
materialistic imagination, they nevertheless contain 
the g'^rms of purer and more spiritual conceptions. 
And there is no doubt that the founder of Christianity 
is more in accord with the new rising movement than 
with the doctrines of his followers, who worship his 
name, but neglect the truth and spirit of his teachings. 

When Christ preached the sermon on the mount, 
which contains, so to say, the programme of his doc- 
trines, he expressly stated : '-'• Think not that I am 
come to destroy the law or the prophets ; I am not 
come to destroy, but to fulfil." This sentence con- 
tains the clue to his grand success. Christ was a con- 
servative revolutionist. The new movement which he 
introduced in the history of mankind, was the result 
of the past ; the New Testament was the fulfillment 
of the Old. And so every successful movement has 
been, not a mere destruction of old errors, not the in- 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 7 

troduction of some absolutely new idea, but the ful- 
fillment of the past, and the realization of long cher- 
ished aspirations and hopes. 

Let us learn a lesson from Christ, and like him, let 
us " not come to destroy, but to fulfil." 



THE VOCATION. 



When I was a youth a voice came unto me and 
said: ^^ Preach!" And I answered: ^'What shall I 
preach? Lo, I am young and have not sufficient 
knowledge." ''Go into the world," I was told, ''and 
preach the truth.*' 

That voice came from my parents and grandpar- 
ents, from my teachers and instructors ; and it found 
a ready response in my soul. To be a preacher of 
Truth, what a great calling ! Is there any profession 
more glorious, is there any work more celestial and 
divine? I will go and preach the truth, I avowed; 
and in the secretness of my heart I swore allegiance 
to the Banner of Truth. I vowed to seek for Truth, 
to find it, to confess it, to go into the wide world and 
to preach it, yea, to give not only all my labor and 
efforts, but, if it were necessary, even my life, my 
blood, myself, and all that I was, for truth. 

That was a holy hour in which I devoted myself to 
the cause of truth, and yet it was a rash decision, a 
preposterous act. It was an act that I had to regret 
in many dreary hours when I desperately pondered 
upon the problems of truth, when I had hopelessly 
lost myself in the labyrinths of life, and when I de- 
spaired of Truth's very existence. 

When I was young. Truth seemed so simple to me. 
What is Truth ? I asked, and the teaching of my child- 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 9 

hood always echoed forth the ready answer : Truth is 
the gospel, and doubt in Truth is the root of all evil. 

I knew the gospel by heart, and I studied eagerly, 
that I might be a worthy minister of the word of God. 
But the more I studied the more that sinful tendency 
to doubt grew, first secretly, then openly, first sup- 
pressed, then frankly acknowledged, until doubt ceased 
to be doubt ; it became an established conviction. A cry 
of despair wrung itself from my heart : ''The gospel 
is not truth ; it is error ! It is a falsity to preach it, and 
he who preaches it, preaches a lie !" 

A pang of discord vibrated through my bosom and 
tore my whole being into two irreconcilable parts. 
Could I step to the altar in this condition and swear 
to preach the gospel ? Never ! I had believed that 
the gospel was but another name for truth and I now 
saw that whatever truth might be, the gospel certainly 
could not be truth. 

Is there truth at all ? No ! I thought ; there is no 
truth ! There are opinions only, and one opinion is as 
good as another. Man likes to look upon the world 
as a cosmos — but there is no cosmic order, there is no 
higher law, there is no justice and no truth in the 
world, there is disorder everywhere, the universe is a 
chaos of forces, natural laws are indifferent to good 
or evil, and the lie rules supreme in society, sham 
gains the victory over truth, cunning and selfishness 
triumph over virtue and love. 

Oh ! these were dreary hours when I had lost the 
ideals of my childhood. I had cast my anchor into 
the ground of religious belief and had suffered a ship- 
wreck, in which I expected to perish. 

There was a time when I did not know which I hated 
more. Science that had taken away the comfort of 



id HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

my religious faith, or Religion that had promised all 
to me and had proved false. Religion could not justify 
itself as Truth before the court of scientific research. 

I abandoned religion and followed science. 

Years passed away amid earnest labors, and science 
reluctantly opened to me her treasures. She made me 
see the wonders of life. Life appeared different to 
me. The universe of science is another world than 
that which I imagined to see around me in the chaotic 
turmoil of the struggle for existence. I perceived in- 
visible threads that connected distant events. I rec- 
ognized that while the laws of nature might work 
blindly, yet they produced order. The more my views 
expanded, the clearer I saw that the chaotic attaches 
to the single, to the isolated only, not to the whole, 
not to the greater system, and the All itself is identical 
with order. The All is a cosmos truly. 

Opinions clash with opinions in the empire of sci- 
ence ; and the knowledge that we possess is almost 
always an approximate statement only of the truth. 
Nevertheless, there is truth and there is error. One 
opinion is by no means equivalent to every other opin- 
ion; there are wrong opinions and correct opinions, 
there is Truth in this world and Truth is a power. She 
reveals her sacred face only to him who earnestly strug- 
gles for truth. Truth may seem awful at first, but fear 
her not; trust her, have confidence in her, even as 
does a child in its mother. Give up your prejudices 
and your misconceptions even if they are holy to you, 
even if they seem to constitute the very life-blood of 
your spiritual being. 

In the meantime I had given up every intention to 
preach the gospel and found satisfaction in the retired 
hermitage of the study, where I became an adept of 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. tt 

truth in quite another sense than I had intended in 
the preposterous ambition of my youth. I was not a 
teacher, not a preacher of truth, but her pupil, not a 
master but a disciple who plodded modestly and 
patiently. How often, O how often, was a grain of 
truth dearly bought through the toil of many, many 
hours — and yet never too dearly ! 

In former years I had answered the question What 
is truth, with the words : ''Truth is the gospel." Now 
I learned to reverse the statement. I had met so much 
misery and woe in the world and in looking around for 
salvation, I said : If there is any gospel, it must be 
truth — and truth must be found by patient labor, by 
scientific, honest research and by severe exactness. 
What a folly in man to imagine that truth should drop 
down from heaven as a revelation. Truth must be con- 
quered by our own efforts. Truth would not be truth 
if it were acquired in some other way. 

Years passed away and, again a voice come unto me 
and spoke: ''Preach! Preach the truth." I answered 
and said: "How can I preach? Am I not a mere 
disciple who has no hope ever to become a master ? I 
am no preacher and no one has appointed me to speak 
in the name of truth. When I was a youth I felt the 
strength to preach, and lo, I had it not. I had almost 
stepped to the altar and had almost made a vow which 
I now know I should have had to break. Let me 
study truth, let me devote my labor to science, but 
send another man worthier than I. Besides, I am not 
eloquent : but I am slow of speech and of a slow 
tongue. I know not how to speak as a preacher to 
the congregation. 

But that voice came again: "Preach the truth." 
He who is called to proclaim the religion of mankind 



ti HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

will not be bound by any oath to adhere to this or to 
that confession of faith. He is pledged to be faithful 
to truth only. If you have the conviction that truth — 
mere truth and nothing but the truth — will be the 
gospel of mankind, that the salvation from error can 
come from it alone, that science, whose fruit seemed 
so bitter at first, contains the germs of a higher re- 
ligion, step forward upon this platform and preach 
that new faith which is greater than the old faith, be- 
cause it is truer. 

I feel as if a preacher that has not joined any of 
the many churches, must be a voice crying in the 
wilderness. But that should be no reason to decline 
the calling. Therefore I shall accept the call upon 
that platform. One thing alone shall be sacred to the 
preacher of the religion of humanity, and that is truth. 
There shall be no oath of allegiance to any dogma, no 
pledge to any creed. I accept the calling, yet I do 
it with hesitation, because I am aware of its difficul- 
ties. And at the same time I accept it in gladness, be- 
cause I know that the new religion which grows out 
of science — out of the rock upon which the old creeds 
were shipwrecked — will not come to destroy. The 
new religion will come to fulfill the old faith. 



RELIGION BASED UPON FACTS, 



A WELL known clergyman, famous for his indefatig- 
able energy, and the comprehensiveness of his practi- 
cal activity, who believed in a supernatural world of 
purely spiritual existence, and a scientist with material- 
istic tendencies who looked upon all religious aspira- 
tions as mere illusions, once had a discussion about 
facts. The scientist declared that science alone dealt 
with facts, the clergy did not see the real world, but 
dealt with things that were unreal. The clergyman 
answered rather sharply in about this way: "You 
scientists imagine that you have a monopoly of facts. 
You should know that I have to deal with facts just as 
much as you do. I have stood at the bed-side of the 
sick and dying, and my experiences concerning that 
which comforts them in the hour of death and tribula- 
tion are based upon observations of facts. Practical 
theology is in no less a degree based upon facts than 
the science of physical or chemical phenomena." 

The clergyman was right in so far as the duties of 
his calling arose from the facts of life. A pastor should 
be the adviser, the fatherly friend, and comforter of 
his congregation in all the situations of life. Individ- 
uals are not isolated beings. Many of their actions, 
and indeed their whole demeanor, are of great concern 
to the community, and the community protects itself 
against vicious individuals by law. The duty of the 



14 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

clergy is to impress upon their congregations the moral 
spirit of goodwill towards all mankind, to teach them 
to regulate their conduct so that in the hour of death 
no remorse will flit over their minds, — to teach them 
that when they lie down to eternal rest, their deeds, 
their love, their sympathy, and their thoughts will live 
on and bear witness to their having fought a noble 
battle in life. The more thoroughly the clergyman 
does his duty in a spirit of religious truth and moral 
aspiration, the less will we want the work of the state's- 
attorney and the judge. 

It is to be hoped that our churches will imbibe 
more and more the positive spirit of the age, and so 
found their duties upon the facts of life. Whether they 
believe in a supernatural world of purely spiritual 
existence is, or should be, of secondary importance. 
Our churches, however, have so much mixed up the 
real and objective facts of life with their antiquated 
interpretations of these facts, that they believe the 
fictitious world of supernaturalism as described in their 
dogmas, to be a reality. 

It is a fact that people need solace in the hour of 
death, it is a fact that matrimony is a holy ordinance, 
in which not only the couple that is united for life 
until death do them part, but the whole community is 
greatly concerned. It is a fact that the birth of a child 
imposes duties upon the parents; the child is not their 
property ; it is entrusted to their care, and they have to 
rear it for the best of humanity. Godfathers or god- 
mothers promise to take the place of parents, if death 
should call the latter away too early to fulfill their 
duties upon the child. From the naming of a child 
upon its entrance into the world, unto the burial of the 
dead, when we pay the last honors to our beloved 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 15 

ones, man's life is permeated with duties that point 
higher than the fulfillment of egotistic desires. Ego- 
tism finds its end in death ; man's duties teach him 
to think beyond his own death. And it is the per- 
formance of these duties that is the substance of all 
religious commands. 

Some imagine that science is limited to the lower 
sorts of natural facts only. Religious and moral facts 
have been too little heeded by our scientists. Thus 
people came to think that science and religion move in 
two different spheres. That is not so. The facts of 
our soul-life must be investigated and stated with 
scientific accuracy, and our clergy should be taught to 
purify religion with the criticism of scientific methods. 
They need not fear for their religious ideals. So far 
as they are true, and their moral kernel is true, they 
will not suffer in the crucible of science. Religion will 
not lose one iota of its grandeur, if it is based upon a 
scientific foundation ; all that it will lose is the errors 
that are connected with religion ; and the sooner they 
are lost the better for us. 

One of my orthodox friends maintains that Chris- 
tianity, that is to say orthodox Christianity, is based 
upon facts, and these facts, he says, are historical facts : 
they are the life and teachings, the suffering and the 
death, and above all the resurrection, of Jesus Christ. 

If Christianity is based solely upon historical facts, 
it stands and falls with their truth. If Christian morals 
depend upon the occurrence of a few events that are 
supposed to have happened once and will never happen 
again, their fate is very problematic indeed. 

The question is well worth a closer consideration. 

Natural processes around us show a certain regu- 
larity combined with a certain irregularity. Every 



i6 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

phenomenon that takes place has its individual fea- 
tures, and no one thing is exactly like another. A vis- 
itor from the city may imagine that every sheep in a 
herd of one breeding looks like the other; yet the 
shepherd knows them all individually, and can distin- 
guish them apart. Grains of corn may appear to us 
all alike, yet they are not ; every one has its own idio- 
syncrasy. But in spite of all difference, there is a uni- 
versality of law in all things and in all natural phe- 
nomena. A closer acquaintance with the nature of the 
differences teaches that they result, and can only re- 
sult, from a difference of condition. Yet it is the same 
law that governs all. Thus we arrive at the conclu- 
sion, that isolated facts cannot exist which stand in 
contradiction to the laws of all other facts. And it is 
a rule that science derives its laws — the so-called nat- 
ural laws — from such facts alone as repeat themselves 
again and again, from such as can be verified by ex- 
periment, from such as are accessible to the observa- 
tion of every one who takes the trouble to investigate. 
It need scarcely be added that the same rule holds 
good for positive philosophy. Single and isolated ob- 
servations cannot give a solid basis for a conception 
of the world. The facts upon which a view of the uni- 
verse rests must be ascertainable by every one who 
cares to be positive about their being as they are rep- 
resented to be and not otherwise. 

The rule is unequivocally acknowledged in science. 
It is accepted — by some with a certain reserve — in 
philosophy. Yet it is recognized in religion only by 
few. Although if it be true in science it must be true 
in religion also. 

What is religion but a conception of the world, in 
accordance with which we regulate our conduct? If 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 17 

religion is based upon verifiable facts, it stands upon 
a rock. If it is based upon an assertion of facts that 
happened once and will never happen again, it is built 
upon sand; and when 'the rain descends, and the 
floods come, and the wind blows, and beat upon it,' 
the structure will fall. 

Chr'st's doctrine in so far as it is the religion of 
Icve, stands upon the moral facts of human soul-life. 
The ethical truth of Christianity rests on solid ground. 
Christian dogmatism, however, stands or falls with the 
history of Christ's life, his death, and resurrection. 
Had not orthodox Christianity been supported by the 
great truth of Christ's religion of love, it long ago 
would have disappeared; for Christianity as an histor- 
ical religion is indeed extremely weak. What must a 
religious truth be that has to depend upon the verifica- 
tion of a few historical facts ? And these historical 
facts are in themselves improbable, na}^, impossible ; 
they stand in contradiction to all the facts verified by 
science, and whether they are true or not, have not 
the least bearing upon the moral conduct of man. 
Whether Christ healed a few lepers or not, whether 
he abstained from all food for forty days or not, whether 
he has bodily risen from the dead or not, the 'ought ' 
of Ethics remains the same. If Christianity means 
the dogmatism of the Church, it is an historical re- 
ligion which will disappear in the course of time; if it 
means the doctrine of Christ, the fulfillment of the law 
through love, it will be the religion of mankind. 



THE RELIGIOUS PROBLEM. 



The political, religious, and intellectual growth of 
humanity constantly produces changes in the condi- 
tions of society, and in times of rapid progress these 
changes may become so great as to demand the read- 
justment of our institutions of government, the refor- 
mation of church and school, and the reconstructior 
of our fundamental conceptions of the world and life. 
When the necessity, therefore, for readjustment and 
reformation becomes keenly felt, problems arise. 
Thus we speak of the social problem, the educa- 
tional problem, the religious problem, and many 
others. 

The religious problem results from the rapid ad- 
vances made by science. Our religious conceptions, 
it is now generally acknowledged, can possess value 
only if they are recognized in their moral importance. 
Their dogmatic features are coming more and more to 
be considered as accessory elements, which can, and 
indeed often do, become injurious to the properly re- 
ligious spirit. 

The moral rules which we accept as our maxims 
of conduct in life, must have some basis to rest upon. 
We demand to know why and to what end the single 
individual has to obey certain commands, to observe 
which may sometimes cost great self-sacrifice. The 
old orthodox systems of religion cannot answer this 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 19 

question at the present day with the authority which 
the blind and unasking faith of their adherents for- 
merly attributed to their utterances; and we are there- 
fore brought to the task of remodeling our religious 
conceptions, in order to make them harmonize with 
the present altered situation. 

The religious problem has been solved differently 
by men of different stamp. The orthodox theologian, 
of course, denies the existence of a religious problem. 
Being stationary he has not progressed with his time \ 
he knows nothing of evolution, and looks upon the 
advances of science as steps towards depravation. 
He would solve the problem by checking all further 
progress, and would keep humxanity down to the level 
of his own littleness. 

The iconoclast, on the other hand, solves the prob- 
lem by extirpating religion altogether. Like Dr. 
Ironbeard, in the German legend, he frees his patient 
from pain by a plentiful dose of opium, that lulls him 
to eternal rest. It is a radical cure. Kill the patient 
and he will cease to complain. 

The religious problem of to-day does not mean 
that we doubt the ten commandments. We do not 
object to the behests: "Thou shaft not steal," 
"Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not bear false 
witness against thy neighbor." Nor do we object to 
the Christian ideals of Faith, Hope, and Charity ; we 
do not oppose the rule, " Love thy neighbor as thy- 
self." The religious problem means that we have 
ceased to believe the dogmas of the church. We 
have ceased to look upon God as a person who made 
the world out of nothing, and governs it at his pleas- 
ure. We have ceased to believe in miracles ; we 
have ceased to believe in the supernatural and in the 



20 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE, 

fairyland which, according to the dreams of former 
ages, existed in heaven beyond the skies. 

So many illusions fell to the ground when the light 
of science was thrown upon them ; but the moral 
command, '^ Love thy neighbor as thyself," did not. 
Science has destroyed the mythology of religion, but 
it has left its moral faith intact j indeed, it has jus- 
tified it ; it proves its truth, and places it upon a solid 
basis, showing it in its simple and yet majestic 
grandeur. 

Science teaches that harmony prevails everywhere, 
although to our blunted senses it often may be diffi- 
cult to discover it. Science teaches that truth is one 
and the same. One truth cannot contradict another 
truth, and when it seems so it is because we have not 
found, but will find, the common law that embraces these 
different aspects of truth which to a superficial in- 
spection appear as contradictory. Science further 
teaches that the individual is a part of the whole. 
The individual must conform to the laws of the All, 
not only to live at all, but also to live well — to live a 
Jife that is worth living. 

The properly religious truths are not the dogmatic 
creeds, but the moral commands ; and it is their scien- 
tific and philosophical justification which is demanded 
by the religious problem of the present age. The so- 
lution of the religious problem must give us a clear 
and popular conception of the world, based upon the 
broadest and most indubitable facts of science so ar- 
ranged that every one can understand the necessity of 
conforming to those laws which have built human so- 
ciety, and make it possible for us to live as human be- 
ings a noble and worthy life. The solution of the 
religious problem will most likely do away with many 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 21 

sectarian ceremonies and customs, it will enable us to 
dispense with certain narrow views and antiquated 
rites, which many, up to this hour, look upon as the 
essentials of religion. But it will not do away with the 
moral law; for we know that that will never pass 
away. It is the moral law which Christ and the 
Apostles again and again declare contains the essence 
of all their injunctions : for the whole law is fulfilled 
in one word, even in this, ''Thou shaft love thy 
neighbor as thyself," and ''This is the love of God 
that we keep his commandments, and his command- 
ments are not grievous." 



NEW WINi; IN OLD BOTTLES. 



Christ said : '' No man seweth a piece of new cloth 
on an old garment : else the new piece that fiUeth it 
up taketh awa}^ from the old and the rent is made 
worse. And no man putteth new wine into old bot- 
tles, else the new wine doth burst the bottles, and the 
wine is spilled and the bottles will be marred ; but 
new wine must be put into new bottles." 

What Christ's meaning was when he spoke these 
words we can hardly guess, for the context in Mat- 
thew (ix, 1 6, 17) as well as in Mark (ii, 21, 22) appears 
to be corrupted. Christ, as reported in these pas- 
sages, said these words in answer to the question : 
" Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy dis- 
ciples fast not?" This part of Christ's answer does 
not fit to the question. But, whatever Christ meant, 
it is certain that, if these allegories mean the renewal 
of old ideas, the rejuvenescence of a dying faith, he 
himself did pour new wine into old bottles. He did 
not reject the truths of the Old Testament, but he 
adopted them, he perfected them, he brought out 
their moral purport, and showed the spirit of their 
meaning. If the simile is to be interpreted in this 
sense, evolution is a perpetual repetition of putting 
new wine into old bottles. 

What is the progress of science but a constant re- 
modeling of our scientific conceptions and terms and 
formulas ? What is the progress of national and so- 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE, 23 

cial life but a constant alteration and improvement of 
old institutions and laws ? 

What enormous changes has our conception of 
God passed through ! How great they are is scarcely 
apparent to us now, at least our orthodox brethren 
are not much aware of it. It is known to the historian ; 
and we can give an idea of these changes by pointing to 
the fact that the idea of evil passed through the same 
phases. The crude anthropomorphism displayed in 
the history of the idea of the devil is fresher in our 
minds, and is better preserved in legends. 

How often have the orthodox on the one hand, 
and infidels on the other, declared that if the word 
God means anything, it means and can mean only 
some one thing. How often did the former conclude 
from such a premise that everyone who did not hold 
their opinion was an atheist, and the latter maintain 
that this conception being wrong, there was no God at 
all. How often was the conception of God changed, 
and how often had the dogmatic believer to shift his 
position. 

There is a point of strange agreement between the 
old orthodox believers and their infidel antagonists. 
Believers, as a rule, declare that religion means noth- 
ing, unless it means the worship of a supernatural 
divine personality ; and atheists, accepting the latter 
definition of religion, conclude that religion, there- 
fore, should be rejected as a superstition. 

This agreement between believers and infidels is 
at first startling. In my childhood I sided with the 
former, in my youth with the latter ; but, when I be- 
came a man, I freed myself from the narrowness of 
both. I now know that some errors they have in 
common. 



24 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

Opponents have always something in common, 
else they could not be antagonistic to one another. 
Thus the orthodox believer and the infidel disbeliever 
stand upon the same ground, and this ground is their 
common error. The infidel speaker on the platform, 
appears to me, in principle as well as in method, like 
an inverted orthodox clergyman. He agrees with his 
adversaries in the principle — and he always falls back 
upon the dogmatic assertion — that there is no one who 
can know : no one who can solve the religious prob- 
lem, no one who can prove or disprove whether there 
is a God and an immortality of the soul or not. But 
the infidel inverts the argument of the orthodox be- 
liever. While the latter argues, "I must believe, be- 
cause I cannot know, I must have faith, because it is 
beyond the ken of human reason;" the infidel con- 
cludes, ^^ because I cannot know, I must ;2^/ believe , 
and I must reject any solution of the problems of God 
and the soul because the subject is beyond the ken of 
human reason." 

Weighing the pros and the cons of the question, I 
became convinced that both parties were one-sided, 
that, misguided by a narrow definition, both had be- 
come so ossified as to allow of no evolution to a higher 
standpoint. Therefore, I discarded all scruples about 
using the words Religion, God, and Soul in a new 
sense, which would be in conformity with science. It 
was, perhaps, a new path that I was traveling, and 
there are few that find it, but it is, nevertheless, I am 
fully convinced, the only true way that leadeth unto life. 

The adherents of the new religious conception are 
in the minority ; and there are the theists on the one 
side, and the agnostics on the other, both uniting their 
objection to a widening of ideas that have become too 



HOMILIES OF SCIEiXCE. 25 

narrow for us now, both declaring that old definitions 
should not be used in a new sense. 

Strange ! is it not ? It seems so, but it is not. 
The agreement between believers and unbelievers is 
easily explainable from the law of inertia. The law 
of inertia holds good in the empire of thought just as 
much as in the empire of matter. 

When Lavoisier discovered that fire was a process 
of oxidation, he met with much opposition among 
his co-workers. It was plainly told him that fire, if it 
meant anything, meant a certain substance, scientifi- 
cally called '^phlogiston," the qualities of which could 
be perceived b}'' our senses. And this phlogiston, it 
was maintained, possessed, among other properties, 
the strange property of a negative weight, and the 
argument seemed so evident, since all flames tend 
upwards. If fire meant a mere mode of motion, 
would not that be equivalent of denying the real 
existence of fire altogether ? 

We now all know that the definition and the mean- 
ing of the words fire and heat have changed. Neither 
have the words been discarded, nor have we ceased to 
believe in the real existence of fire, since we have 
given up our wrong notion of the materiality of fire. 
On the contrary, we now know better what fire is, and 
in what consists the reality of a flame. 

Concerning religion let us follow the example of 
Christ, and break the fetters that antiquated definitions 
impose upon us. Not the letter giveth life, but the 
spirit ; and let us preserve the spirit of religious truth, 
if need be, at the sacrifice of the letter, in which the 
spirit is threatened to be choked. 

Christ's words about the new cloth, and the new 
wine, it seems to me, meant that certain religious 



26 HOMILIES OF SCIENCR. 

institutions, that ceremonies and fornns A^ill wear 
out like old garments, and like old bottles. Anti- 
quated institutions, which hav® lost their sense, should 
not be preserved. For instance, the sacrifices of 
lambs and goats, which were offered by the Jews, as 
well as by the Greeks and the Romans, were aban- 
doned in Christianity : they had lost their meaning, 
and Christ's religion would have been an old garment 
with a new piece of cloth on it, if the old cult had 
been preserved. Indeed, even the Jews are so much 
imbued with the new spirit that they have given up 
their sacrifices forever. 

It will be the same with the new religion that is 
now dawning upon mankind. Some of the old cere- 
monies have lost their meaning, they will have to be 
dropped. But the whole purport of religion, the 
ideal of religion and its mission v^ill not be gone. 
Man will always want a guide in life, a moral teacher 
and instructor. Man must not allow himself to drift 
about on the ocean of life, he must have something to 
regulate his conduct. Who shall do that? Shall man 
follow his natural impulse to get as much pleasure out 
of his life as he can ? Shall he follow science ? Or 
shall he follow religion ? 

Man might follow science, if every man could be- 
come a scientist ; and in some sense, this is possible. 
We can not, all of us, become specialists in the different 
sciences, but we can, all of us, to some extent become 
specialistsin ethics. What is religion but a popularized 
system of ethics ? And this religion of ethics will be 
the religion of the future. All of us who aspire after 
progress, work for the realization of this religion. 

Let the religion of the future be a religion of science, 
let religion not be in conflict with science, but let the 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 27 

science of moral conduct be so popularized that tiie 
simplest mind can obey its behests, not only because 
he knows that disobedience will ruin him, but also be- 
cause he has learned to appreciate the moral com- 
mands, so as to love them, and follow them because 
he loves them. 



THE REVISION OF A CREED. 



We have at present the strange spectacle that in 
one of our churches the proposition is discussed to 
change some grave particulars of creed. The old 
doctrines have become '^unpreachable," as it is ex- 
pressed, either because the ministers no longer be- 
lieve them, or because people are loath to listen to 
ideas which now appear as monstrosities and absur- 
dities. 

We naturally hail the progress of a church and its 
development into broader views of religious truth. 
Yet at the same time we feel the littleness of the ad- 
vance. What is the progress of a few steps, if a man 
has to travel hundreds of miles ! Moreover, what is 
any progress, if it is done under the pressure of cir- 
cumstances only and not from a desire to advance and 
keep abreast with the true spirit of the times ! The 
change of a creed should not be forced upon a 
church from without by the progress of unchurched 
thinkers, but it should result from the growth and ex- 
panse of its own life. The church, as the moral in- 
structor of mankind, should not be dragged along be- 
hind the triumphant march of humanity, but should 
deploy in front with the vanguard of science ! 

The eternal damnation of noble-minded heathen 
and of the tender-souled infants who happen to die 
unbaptized, was sternly believed in by the ancestors 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 



29 



of our Presbyterian friends. They declared, without 
giving any reasonable argument for their opinion, that 
this is part of the divine order of things, and whoso- 
ever does not believe it, will be damned for all eternity, 
together with the wise Socrates and the virtuous Con- 
fucius. 

Who made Calvin the councillor of divine provi- 
dence and who gave him the right of electing or reject- 
ing the souls of men ? On what ground could his 
narrow view, excusable in his time, be incorporated 
into the creed of a church ? The argument on which 
Calvin's view rests, was very weak, but the founders 
of the Presbyterian Church being convinced of its 
truth, thought to strengthen it by incorporating the 
doctrine into their Confession. An idea, once sanctified 
by tradition, has a tenacious life. Reverence for the 
founders of a church will keep their errors sacred 
and will not allow an impartial investigation of their 
opinions. 

Reverence is a good thing ; but all reverence toward 
men, be they ever so venerable, must be controlled by 
the reverence for truth. And this is the worst part of 
the change of the Confession. The change, it appears, 
is not made because the objectionable doctrines are 
recognized as errors ; but simply because they are at 
the present time too repulsive for popular acceptance. 

Why are the doctrines of eternal punishment not 
openly and confessedly branded as errors? Why can 
it not be acknowledged that tenets which our fathers 
considered as truths of divine revelation, were after all 
their personal and private opinions only ? 

We ask why, but receive no explanation. Yet 
there is a reason that lurks behind ; although it seems 
as if the men who are most concerned were not con- 



30 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

scious of it. If the error were acknowledged, a prin- 
ciple would be pronounced which opens the door to a 
greater and more comprehensive reform. And such 
a reform is not wanted. The clergy seem to be 
afraid of it. If the error is conceded, it means the 
denial of the infallibility of the Confession. The dog- 
mas of the church cease to be absolute verities ; and 
truth is recognized above the creed of the church, as 
the highest court of appeal — truth, ascertainable by 
philosophical enquiry and scientific research. 

This would be equivalent to the abolition of all 
dogmas and would mean the enthronement of a princi- 
ple to fill their place. This principle, if we look at it 
closely, is nothing new ; it is an old acquaintance of 
ours j it is the same principle on which science stands. 
And the recognition of this principle would be the 
conciliation between science and religion once for all. 

Brethren, do not shut your eyes in broad daylight, 
but look freely about and follow the example of the 
great founder of Christianity. Worship God not in 
vain repetitions, not in pagan adoration, as if God were 
a man like ourselves. Worship God in spirit and in 
truth. Acknowledge the superiority of truth above 
your creed, and be not ashamed of widening the pale 
of your churches. 

If you acknowledge the supremacy of truth and 
make your changes in the Confession because truth 
compels you to make them, your progress will be that 
of a man who walketh upright and straight. But if 
you do not acknowledge the superiority of truth above 
your creed, if you identify truth with your creed, your 
progress will be the advance of a soldier loitering in 
the rear of his army, who is afraid of being left be- 
hind. You will unwillingly have to yield to the ne- 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 31 

cessity of a change ; and you will have to do it again 
and again, and always without dignity. 

Is it dignified to alter a religious creed because it 
appears as a relic of barbarism, because it has become 
odious to the people, and because it no longer suits 
their tastes ? Your Confession should be allegiance 
to truth. Will you degrade it to be the unstable ex- 
pression of the average opinion of your members ? 

There is but one way to free yourselves from all 
these difficulties. Recognize no dogma as absolute 
and reverence no confession as infallible ; but let truth, 
ascertainable truth, be the supreme judge of all doc- 
trines and of all traditions. 

Your bible, your hymn-book, your catechism, the 
history of your church, and the reminiscences of your 
venerable leaders shall remain respected among your- 
self and children, but let them not be overrated in 
their authority. Truth reigns above them all, and 
the holiness of truth is the foundation of all true re- 
ligion. 

When Luther stood before the emperor and the 
representatives of church and state, he begged to be 
refuted, and if he were refuted, he promised to keep 
silence ; but as he was not, he continued to preach 
and he preached boldly in the name of truth as one 
that had authority. Therefore let religious progress 
be made as in the era of the Reformation, not in com- 
plaisance to popular opinion, but squarely in the 
name of truth. 



THE RELIGION OF PROGRESS. 



Vladimir Solovieff, a Russian thinker of uncom- 
mon depth calls attention to the fact that the central 
idea of Christianity must be sought in the glad tidings 
of the kingdom of God. He says:* *'To either the 
direct or indirect elucidation of this idea are devoted 
almost all the sermons and parables of Christ, his eso- 
teric conversations with the disciples, and finally the 
prayer to God the Father. From the connection of 
the texts relating thereto, it is clear, that the evangel- 
ical idea of the kingdom is not derived from the con- 
cept of divine rule, existing above all things, and at- 
tributed to God, conceived as almighty. The king- 
dom proclaimed by Christ is a thing, advancing, ap- 
proaching, arriving. Moreover it possesses different 
sides of its own. It is within us, and likewise reveals 
itself without; it keeps growing within humanity and 
the whole world by means of a certain objective, or- 
ganic process, and it is taken hold of by a spontane- 
ous effort of our own will." 

This conception of Christianity is strikingly correct. 
Taking the gospels of the New Testament as our source 

* "Christianity : Its Spirit and its Errors." The Open Court, Vol. V, No. 
206, p. 2900. Translated from the Russian Quarterly Voprosui Filosofii i Psi- 
(hologii by Albert Gunlogsen, 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 



33 



of information, we find none of the Church dogmas 
proclaimed, but we hear again and again that the king- 
dom of God is near at hand, and that the kingdom of 
God Cometh not with observation, i. e. with ceremo- 
nies or rites. It is not an institution as are syna- 
gogues and churches. It exists in the hearts of men. 
We must create it, we must make it grow within us. 
Our own efforts are needed to let it come. Says Christ : 
'' From the days of John the Baptist until now the 
kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent 
take it b}^ force." 

Is this not a strange conception of the kingdom of 
God? Indeed it is, if we preserve the orthodox God- 
idea of a personal world- monarch. But it is not a 
strange conception of the kingdom of God, if we un- 
derstand by God the divinity of the universe and the 
potentiality of spiritual life which has produced us and 
leads us onward still on the path of progress to ever 
greater truths and sublimer heights. 

What is the meaning of the kingdom of God if we 
state it in purely scientific terms without using the 
symbolism of allegorical expressions? God means 
that reality about us and within us in which we live 
and move and have our being, and the kingdom of God 
which has to come, which grows within us, is our 
knowledge of God, it is our cognition of reality, it is 
the evolution of truth. What is truth but a correct 
conception of realit}^ and what is all religion but our 
agreement with truth in thought as well as in action? 

When asked by Pilate whether he was a king 
Christ said : '^Thou sayest that I am a king. To this 
end I was born, and to this cause I came into the 
world that I should bear witness unto the truth. Ev- 
eryone that is of the truth, heareth my voice." 



34 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

Christ considered himself as a kin^^ of truth. '' My 
kingdom," he said, ^'is not of this world," meaning 
thereby the world in which the ambition of Pilate was 
centered. Christ did not intend to exercise political 
power and the accusations of his enemies as well as 
the hopes of his followers that he would create a 
worldly kingdom were unfounded. His kingdom was 
a spiritual kingdom. — the kingdom of truth. Truth 
however is not something that exists somewhere as 
objects exist in material reality, truth is the correct- 
ness, the validity, the adequateness of our concep- 
tions of reality; and truth does not come to us, we 
must produce it, we must work it out through our own 
efforts, we must build it up in our own souls. The 
more we have acquired of truth, the more we shall 
partake of the kingdom of God. For Truth is the 
kingdom of God and the kingdom of God is Truth. 
Every other conception of the kingdom of God is pure 
mythology. 

Christianity being the gospel of the kingdom of 
God, it became the religion of progress. Its aim is 
the growth of truth within us, and all our efforts are 
needed to develop truth. Thus a spiritual realm of 
truth and of obedience to truth, i. e. morality was 
created ; and this spirit of progress remained the liv- 
ing spirit of Christianity in spite of all the vagaries of 
the Christian churches. 

Dogmatic Christianity is dead. Yet it still exists 
as a dead weight. Dogmatism is barren like the thorns 
and thistles in the parable, and it is choking the spirit 
of the Christian religion, but this spirit will not die, 
it will spring up again and lead mankind upward and 
onward to higher and grander goals. 

The test of progress is ever increasing truth, i. e. 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 35 

an ever more comprehensive conception of the world 
we live in ; yet the test of religion is progress. 

He alone is Christ the Messiah, the saviour who 
leads us onward on the path of progress, and he only 
is a disciple of Christ who courageously follows on the 
path of progress. Those who attempt to make man- 
kind stationary, who try to lock up the stream of life, 
and prevent the soul from growing and expanding, 
from increasing in the knowledge of the truth and thus 
developing the kingdom of God, are false prophets 
who come to us in sheep's clothes. They preach the 
letter of the gospel but suppress its spirit. 



THE 'I EST OF PROGRESS. 



The word ''Progress" is one of the most com- 
monly used terms and yet its meaning is extremely 
vague with most people. Progress is the ideal of our 
time and the glory of this generation. But what is 
progress ? Can we give a definite and clear answer 
to this question, or is "progress" one of the many 
words by which people feel much but think little ? 

Progress is the act of stepping forward, it is a 
march onward. But who can tell us the right direc- 
tion of an onward march ? Did it ever happen to you 
when travelling on your ideal highroad of progress that 
you met a man who marched in the direction which 
you left behind ? It happens very often, and if you 
inquire of the wanderer, Why do you go backward in- 
stead of forward ? he will assure you that he marches 
onward while you yourself are retrogressive. Those 
who preach progress are by no means unanimously 
agreed as to the right direction. Make a chart of all 
the directions propounded and it will look like a com- 
pass dial. All directions possible are represented and 
there are not a few who believe that the development 
of our present civilisation proceeds in the wrong di- 
rection ; they call us actually backwards to stages 
which lie behind us in a distant past and would con- 



HOMILIES OF SCIEXCE. 37 

sider a return to them as real progress. These retro- 
gressive reformers are not so much among the ultra- 
conservative classes as among the ultra-radical en- 
thusiasts who in one-sided idealism find perfection in 
the most primitive states either of absolute anarchy 
or absolute socialism, or whatever may be their special 
hobby. 

The question, What is progress ? is of paramount 
importance to ethics. For if there is no progress, if 
the direction of the onward movement is either inde- 
terminable or indifferent, then, certainly there is no 
ethics. And if there is a special and determinable 
line along which alone progress has to take place, it 
is this alone which has to be used as a compass for 
our course of action. This line alone can be the norm 
of morality. From this alone we have to derive our 
moral rules, this alone can give us the real contents of 
the otherwise empty and meaningless term of moral 
goodness and this alone must constitute our basis of 
ethics. 

Our time should know what progress is, for our 
generation surveys the origin and growth of life so 
much better than did an}^ previous generation. We 
now know that all life follows certain laws of evolution 
and has begun from the very beginning as slimy specks 
of living substance developing to the present state. 
The man of to-day is the product of that evolution, and 
man's progress is nothing but a special form of evo- 
lution ; it is the evolution of mankind. Our scientists 
have discovered the fundamental laws of evolution ; 
so they may be able to give us a satisfactory explana- 
tion of progress. The law of evolution we are informed 
is adaptation to surroundings. The polar bear adapts 
himself in the color of his skin and in his habits to his 



38 . HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

environment ; while the insects of Madeira lose their 
power of flight and have to a great extent become wing- 
less. There is a survival of the fittest everywhere, but 
natural selection does not always favor the strongest 
and the best. The ablest flyers on the islands are 
swept by the winds into the ocean and the weak only 
will survive, those who are lacking in a special virtue, 
but not the bravest, not the strongest, not the best! 

May we not imagine that there are periods or so- 
cieties so radically corrupt (and history actually teaches 
that there were repeatedly such eras) in which the 
spirit of the time made it actually impossible for good 
men to exist and to act morally. The evil influence 
of tyranny, of corruption, or of hypocrisy swept the 
brave, the courageous, the honest, the thinking out 
of existence and allowed only the weak, the degen- 
erate, the unthinking to remain ? It is true that when- 
ever a nation fell under such a blight, she was doomed. 
Other nations took her place and there were quite a 
number of peoples entirely blotted out from the face 
of the globe. We have progressive as well as retro- 
gressive adaptation (as Professor Weismann informs 
us), and adaptation in many cases is no sign of pro- 
gress in the physical world, let alone the moral pro- 
gress of human beings. We may say that the law of 
adaptation explains survival, but it cannot afford a 
criterion of progress. 

We will ask the philosopher what progress is. The 
philosopher takes a higher and more general view of 
life, he may give us a broader and better information 
as to what is the characteristic feature of progress. 
Progress, we are told, is ''a passage from a homoge- 
neous to a heterogeneous state." ... ''It is a contin- 
ually increasing disintegration of the whole mass ac- 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE 39 

companied by an integration, a differentiation, and a 
mutual, perpetually-increasing dependence of parts as 
well as of functions, and by a tendency to equilibrium 
in the functions of the parts integrated." Complexity, 
it is maintained, is a sign of a higher evolution, and 
it is true — in many respects higher forms of exist- 
ence are richer, more elaborate, more specialised, than 
lower forms. But is therefore complexity the crite- 
rion of progress ; can we use it as a test wherever we 
are in doubt in a special case. Does it show us the 
nature of progress, its meaning and importance? It 
appears that this explanation is not even generally 
true, for there are most weighty and serious excep- 
tions which overthrow the validity of this formula en- 
tirely. Is not the progress in the invention of ma- 
chinery from the more complex to the less complex? 
Invent a machine to do a special kind of work simpler 
than those at present in use ; it will, the amount and 
exactitude of work being equal, on the strength of its 
simplicity alone be considered superior and it will soon 
replace the more complex machinery in the market. 
Mr. Herbert Spencer, the philosopher of evolu- 
tion, overlooked the main point when he attempted to 
explain evolution as he proposed in terms of matter 
and motion. Evolution means change of form, and 
this change of form has a special meaning. Evolu- 
tion is not a material process and not a mechanical 
process, and the attempt to solve the problem of evo- 
lution on the ground of materialism or mechanicalism 
(i. e. to express its law in terms of matter and motion) 
must necessarily be a failure. Mr. Spencer, it is true, 
recognises the importance of the formal element, for 
his view of increasing complexity involves form and 
change of form. Yet he selects a mere external 



40 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

feature (one that is not even a universal) as charac- 
teristic of evolution and he neglects the very meaning 
of the change of form. This meaning remaining as an 
irresoluble residue in his philosophical crucible might 
find a place of shelter under the protecting wings of 
the Unknowable ; but this meaning of the change of 
form is the very nerve of the question and all other 
things are matters of detail and secondary considera- 
tion. 

The evolution of the solar system, being a mechan- 
ical process may find in the Kant-La Place hypothesis 
a purely mechanical solution. But the evolution of 
animal life is not a purely mechanical process. There 
is in it an element of feeling which is not mechanical. 
I do not mean to say that the nervous process which 
takes place while an animal feels is not mechanical. 
On the contrary I consider all processes which are 
changes of place, biological processes included, as in- 
stances of molar or molecular mechanics. But the 
feeling itself is no mechanical phenomenon. It is a 
state of awareness and in this state of awareness some- 
thing is represented. This state of awareness has a 
meaning, which may be called its contents. 

I do not hesitate to consider the meaning that feel- 
ing acquires as the characteristic feature not only of 
animal but especially also of intellectual life — ^of the 
life of man. It is upon the meaning-freighted feelings 
that soul life originates. Let ev^ery special feeling, 
representing a special condition or object, be consti- 
tuted by a special form of nerve-action, and we should 
see the soul, the psychological aspect of nerve-forms, 
develop together with the organism. A higher devel- 
opment leads naturally, as a rule but not without ex- 
ceptions, to a greater complexity of nerve-forms. Yet 



HOMILIES OF SCIEXCE. 4I 

it is not this complexity which constitutes the evolu- 
tion of the soul and the progress in the development 
of the organism. The test of progress can be found 
in the meaning alone with which the feelin^^s that live 
in the action of these nerve-forms, are freighted. 

What is this meaning ? 

The different soul-forms (so we may for brevity's 
sake call these feelings, living in the different nerve- 
structures) represent special experiences and through 
these experiences the surroundings of the organism 
are depicted. The soul accordingly is an image of 
the world impressed into living substance and de- 
picted in feelings. This however is not all, the soul 
is more than that. It is also the psychical aspect of 
the reaction that takes place in response to the stim- 
uli of the surroundings. And this reaction is indeed 
the most important part in the life of the soul. The 
former may be called by a generalised name cogni- 
tion or intelligence, the latter activity or ethics. The 
former has no other purpose than to serve as an in- 
formation for the proper direction and guidance of the 
latter. 

We do not consider the world as a chaos of mate- 
rial particles. We do not believe that blind chance 
rules supreme. On the contrary we see order every- 
where and law is the regulating principle in all things 
and processes. The world is not a meaningless med- 
ley, but a cosmos which in its minutest parts is full of 
significance and purport. And this truth has found a 
religious expression in the God-idea. The world con- 
sidered in its cosmic grandeur is divine, and when in 
the process of evolution the soul develops as an image 
of the world, the divinity of the cosmos is also mir- 
rored in the soul. The higher animal life rises, the 



42 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

more does it partake of the divine, and it reaches the 
highest cHmax in men and finally in the ideal of a per- 
fectly moral man — in the God man. 

The test of progress must be sought in the growth 
of soul. The more perfectly, the more completely, 
the more truthfully the world is imaged in the soul- 
forms, so as to enable mankind, the individual man as 
well as the race, to react appropriately upon the pro- 
per occasions, to be up in doing and achieving, to act 
wisely, aspiringly and morally, the higher have we 
risen on the scale of evolution. It is not the com- 
plexity of soul-forms which creates their value, it is 
their correctness, their congruence with reality, their 
truth. Evolution sometimes leads to a greater com- 
plexity. In the realm of cognition it does so wherever 
discrimination is needed. But sometimes again it will 
lead to a greater simplicity. Complexity alone would 
have a bewildering aspect, it must be combined with 
economy, and the economy of thought is so important 
because it simplifies our intelligence ; it enables us not 
only to see more of truth at once but also to recognise 
the laws of nature, the order of the cosmos, and its 
divinity. 

The test of progress, in one word, is the realisa- 
tion of truth extensive as well as intensive, in the soul 
of man. The more truth the human soul contains 
and the more it utilises the truth in life, the more pow- 
erful it will be and the more moral. In this way the 
soul partakes of the divinity of its creator, call it na- 
ture or God ; it will come more and more in harmony 
with the cosmos, it will more and more conform to its 
laws, it will be the more religious, the holier, the 
greater, the diviner, the higher it develops and the 
further it progresses. 



THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION. 



The first chapter of Genesis is at present inter- 
preted by the greatest number of our theologians in a 
sense which is hostile to the theory of evolution. It 
is nevertheless one of the most remarkable documents 
that prove the age of the idea, for no impartial reader, 
either of the original or of a correct translation will find 
the dogma of special creation acts out of nothing justi- 
fied in these verses. The first verses of Genesis tell us 
that God ''shaped" the world beginning with simple 
forms of non-organised matter and rising to the higher 
and more complex forms of plants and animals. God 
shaped the heaven and the earth, is the correct trans- 
lation, he made the greater and the lesser light, i. e. he 
formed them ; he made man and the breath of man's 
life is God's own breath. If Darwin himself or a poet 
like Milton, thoroughly versed in Darwinian thought, 
had been called upon to present the evolution theory 
in a popular form to the contemporaries of Moses they 
could not have described it in a more striking man- 
ner. Any improvements upon the Mosaic account 
which could be suggested are mere trifles and matters 
of detail. 

It is a fact that ethical aspirations, the ideal of 
elevating humanity, of raising men upon the higher 



44 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

level of a divine manhood, of creating a nobler type 
of human beings, of saving the souls that would go 
astray and showing them the narrow and strait gate 
which alone leads into life, — in short the sursum of 
evolution, — have been the kernel of all religions, espe- 
cially those great religions which in the struggle for 
existence have survived up to this day — Brahmanism, 
Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedan- 
ism. Nevertheless the idea of evolution is still looked 
upon with suspicion by the so-called orthodox leaders 
of our churches. Do they not as yet understand the 
religious nature of the idea? Or is it perhaps exactly 
its religious nature of which they are afraid ? For 
being a religious truth, it will in time sweep away 
many religious errors which are fondly cherished and 
have grown dear to pious souls. 

The idea of evolution as a vague and popular con- 
ception of the world-process is very old, but as a theory 
based upon exact science it is not much older than a 
century. 

Kant told us in his '' Natural History of the 
Starry Heavens " that an evolution is taking place in 
the skies, forming according to mechanical laws solar 
systems out of the chaotic wcrld-dust of nebulae. Cas- 
par Friedrich Wolff,* Lamarck, f Treviranus,| Karl 
von Baer, § and others came lo the same conclusion 
with regard to the domain of organised life and Baer 
pronounced the proposition that evolution was the 
fundamental idea of the whole universe. || The work 
of these men is the foundation upon which Charles 

* Theoria Generationis. 1759. 

t Philosophie Zoologique. 1794. 

X Biologie. 1802, 

§ Entwickelungs-Geschirhte der Thiere, t8?8 

II Ibid. p. 294. 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 45 

Darwin stood. This great hero of scientific investiga- 
tion collected with keenest discrimination and most 
careful circumspection the facts which prove that the 
struggle for life will permit only those to survive which 
are the fittest to live and will thus bring about not 
only a differentiation of species, not only an increasing 
adaptation to circumstances in the animal world at 
large, but also the progress of the human race. 

The evolution in the animal kingdom has a peculi- 
arity which distinguishes it from that of the starry 
heavens. It takes place exactly in the same way ac- 
cording to mechanical laws, being a complex process 
of differentiation, yet there is an additional element in 
it. Animals are feeling beings. 

When certain motions pass through the organism 
of an animal there arises an awareness of the motion, 
and this awareness, which is a mere subjective state, 
is called "feeling." The same impressions produce 
the same forms of vibrations in the organism and the 
same forms of vibrations in the organism exhibit the 
same feelings. Every impression however leaves a 
trace in the system which is preserved and when pro- 
perly stimulated will be reawakened together with its 
feeling element. When new sense-impressions are 
produced, the old memories of the same kind reawaken 
together with them, and all their feelings blend into 
one state of consciousness richer than the present 
sense-impression could be, if it stood alone and un- 
connected with the traces of former sense-impressions. 
In this way the whole world of an animal's surround- 
ing's is being mapped out in the traces left in the or- 
ganism according to the law of the preservation of 
form, as after-effects of sense-impressions and of their 
correlated reactions. Many of these traces when stim- 



46 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE 

ulated into activity exhibit states of awareness and 
thus consciousness rises into existence constituting a 
realm of spiritual life. 

This spiritual life has been called the ideal world in 
opposition to the world of objective reality — ideal mean- 
ing pictorial, for the ideal world depicts the real world 
in images woven of the glowing material of feelings. 

Evolution in the animal world concentrates more 
and more in a development of the ideal world and this 
ideal world is not something foreign to the world of 
objective realities which it mirrors, it is intimately in- 
terconnected with it. Reality must be thought of as 
containing in itself the conditions of bringing forth 
feeling beings and through feeling beings the ideal 
world ; and this ideal world is not merely a phantas- 
magoria, a beautiful mirage without any practical pur- 
pose, it is to the beings which develop it the most 
important and indispensable thing, for it serves them 
as a guide through life and as a basis for regulating 
their actions. If the world of objective realities is 
correctly depicted in the ideal world, it will help them 
to act in the right way, so as to preserve their lives, 
their existence, their souls. Ideas which are correct, 
which faithfully represent the realities which they de- 
pict, are called true, and actions which are based on 
and regulated by true ideas are called right or moral. 

Thus the ideal world contains in germ the possi- 
bilities of truth and of morality. 

Evolution in the spiritual world means the devel- 
opment of truth, it means an expanse of the soul, a 
growth of the mind as well as a strengthening of the 
character to live in obedience to truth. 

When Mr. Spencer undertook to write a philosophy 
of evolution, he was fully conscious of the sweeping 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 



47 



importance of the evolution theory, but when he ap- 
proached the ethical problem, he became inconsistent 
with his own principle and instead of establishing an 
ethics of evolution, he propounded an ethics of hedon- 
ism regarding that action as right which produced the 
greatest surplus of pleasurable feelings. 

Pleasurable feelings are experienced under most 
contradictory conditions. Pleasures cannot form any 
standard of ethics or a regulative principle to guide 
our appetites. Pleasures on the contrary are often 
dangerously misleading and many a life has been 
wrecked by trying to choose that course of action which 
promises a surplus of pleasures. 

Feelings are mere subjective states and their im- 
portance depends entirely upon the meanings which 
they convey. It is not the pleasurableness of feelings 
and of ideas which ought to be considered when they 
are proposed as norms for action, but their correctness, 
their truth. That which brings man nearer the truth 
and harmonises our actions with the truth is right, and 
that which alienates man from the truth is wrong. 
Accordingly that which makes our souls grow and 
evolve is moral, that which dwarfs our souls and pre- 
vents their evolution is immoral. 

There is but one ethics and that ethics is the ethics 
of evolution. 



FAIRY TALES AND THEIR IMPORTANCE. 



The attempt has been made to banish fairy tales 
from our nurseries. The cry is raised ''away with 
ogres and fairies, away with fictitious monsters ! Let 
us teach our children truth and nothing but truth. 
Prepare their minds for life. It is a downright in- 
jury to fill their imagination with stories that are uq- 
real, untrue, and even impossible." 

This proposition is made on the ground that every- 
thing unreal is untrue ; therefore it is obnoxious and 
should not be allowed to be instilled into the minds of 
children. 

The principle of removing everything untrue from 
our plan of education is unquestionably good. The 
purpose of education is to make children fit for life, 
and one indispensable condition is to teach them truth, 
wherever we are in possession of truth ; and, what is 
more, to teach them the method how to arrive at truth, 
how to criticise propositions, wherever we have not as 
yet arrived at a clear and indisputable statement of 
truth. 

Allowing that fairy tales are unreal and may lead 
the imagination of children astray : are they for this 
very reason untrue ? Do they not contain truths of 
great importance, which it is very difficult to teach 
children otherwise than in the poetic shape of fairy 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 49 

tales ? I believe this is the reason why in spite of so 
much theoretical antagonism to fairy tales they have 
practically never been, and perhaps never will be, re- 
moved from our nurseries. There are no witches who 
threaten to abuse the innocence of children, and there 
are no fairies to protect them. But are there not im- 
personal influences abroad that act as if they were 
witches, and are there not also some almost unac- 
countable conditions in the nature of things that we 
meet often in the course of events, but which act as if 
they were good fairies to protect children (and no less 
the adult children of nature called men,) in dangers 
which surround them everywhere, and of which they 
are not always conscious ? 

Science will at a maturer age explain such mys- 
teries, it will reveal to the insight of a savant that 
which is a marvelous miracle to the childish concep- 
tion of an immature observation. But so long as our 
boys and girls are not born as savants, they have to 
pass through the period of childhood, they have to 
develop by degrees and have to assimilate the facts of 
life, they have to acquire truth in the way we did, 
when we were children, as the race did, when hu- 
manity was in a state of helpless childhood still. 

Did not religion also come to us in the form of a 
fairy tale ? And is not a great truth contained in the 
legend of Christianity ? The belief in the fairy tale will 
pass away, but the truth will remain. 

The development of children, it has been observed, 
is a short repetition of the development of the race. 
Will it be advisable to suppress that stage in which 
the taste for fairy tales is natural? Is not a knowledge 
of legends, fairy tales, and sagas an indispensable part 
of our education, which, if lacking, will make it impos- 



50 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

sible to understand the most common place allusions 
in popular authors? Our art galleries will become a 
book with seven seals to him who knows nothing about 
the labors of Hercules or the Gods of Olympus. Will 
you compensate the want of an acquaintance with our 
most well-known legends, sagas, and characters of fic- 
tion at a later period, when the taste for such things has 
passed away ? 

I met once an otherwise well-educated lady who 
did not know who Samson was. An allusion to Sam- 
son's locks had no meaning to her, for she had en- 
joyed a liberal education, her parents being free- 
thinkers, she had never read the Bible and knew only 
that the Bible was an old-fashioned work, chiefly of 
old Hebrew literature, which she supposed was full 
of contradictions and without any real value. 

A total abolition of fairy tales is not only inadvis- 
able, but will be found to be an impossibility. There 
are certain classical fairy tales, sagas, and legends, 
which have contributed to the ethical, religious, and 
even scientific formation of the human mind. Thus 
not only many stories in the Old and the New Testa- 
ment, but also Homer, Hesiod, and many German 
and Arabian fairy tales have become an integral part 
of our present civilization. We cannot do away with 
them without at the same time obliterating the devel- 
opment of most important ideas. Such fairy tales 
teach us the natural growth of certain moral truths 
in the human mind. These moral truths were com- 
prehended first symbolically and evolved by and by 
into a state of rational clearness. 

I do not propose to tell children lies, to tell them 
stories about fairies and ogres and to make them be- 
lieve these stories. Children, having an average in- 



HOMILIES OF SCIEXCE. 51 

telligence, will never believe the stories, however much 
they may enjoy them. The very question : Is that 
really true ? repeated perhaps by every child, betrays 
their critical mind. Any one who would answer, '' Of 
course, every word is literally true," would be guilty 
of implanting an untruth in the young minds of our 
children. We must not suppress but rather develop 
the natural tendency of criticism. 

While we cannot advise the doing away with fairy 
tales, we can very well suggest that the substance of 
them may be critically revised, that superfluous matter 
may be removed and those features only retained that 
are inspiring and instructive. 



THE VALUE OF MYSTICISM. 



Mysticism is the blight of science. Mysticism in 
science is Hke a fog in clear daylight. It makes the 
steps of the wanderer unsafe and robs him of the 
use of his most valuable sense — the sense of sight. 
There is impenetrable darkness around him ; every- 
thing is confused by insolvable problems. The whole 
world appears to the benighted mystic as one great 
and inscrutable enigma. 

Mysticism in religion is widely different. It is 
here where the value of mysticism must be sought 
for. But religious mysticism does not claim that 
truth is unknowable. It claims not only, as does 
science, that truth can be known, it claims that truth 
can h^ felt even before it is known. Truth is a strong 
and wholesome power, unconquerable and omnipotent, 
which is available not only to the knowing but to those 
also who grope in the dark, yet cherish the love of 
truth in their hearts. 

A scientist can scientifically enquire into the social 
laws, and can after a life-time of long and laborious 
study arrive at the truth, that what is injurious to the 
swarm is not good for the bee. The ethical maxims : 
thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt 
honor father and mother, the scientist will perceive, 
are not cunningly invented by religious or political 
leaders, they are the indispensable conditions under 



HOMILIES OF SCIEXCE. 53 

which alone society can exist. Wherever they are not 
heeded the whole community will go to the wall. 
The individual that sins against these la\vs will injure 
society, yet he will ruin himself at the same time. 

The ethical truths are important truths, and it is 
good to know them, to understand their full import- 
ance. Yet even those who are unable to grasp them 
in their minds; those who have not the scientific 
knowledge to see how the moral law works destruction 
to the trespasser and is a blessing to him v^^ho keeps 
the law — even the unscientific, the poor in spirit, can 
feel the truth ; they can trustingly accept it on faith 
and ca?i be siwe that they are right. And truly, if 
they do accept it, if they act accordingly, they are better 
off than those scientists who have arrived at some 
approximations that upon the whole it is perhaps after 
all even for the single individual better to be honest, 
than to be shrewd. 

There are scientists and among them some of 
great name and fame, who after a life-time of long 
and laborious study did not arrive at the ethical 
truths that the moral commands will preserve, and 
that they do preserve, both the individual who keeps 
them and the society to v/hich that individual belongs. 
There are naturalists who are very familiar with a 
certain province of nature, especially with the brute 
creation. They say, not the morally good will sur- 
vive, but the strongest, the cunningest and the 
shrewdest. The naturalists who say that, are most 
learned professors; they are crammed with biological 
data, and have made many zoological observations ; 
they know facts of nature and have classified them as 
natural laws — but Nature herself has not revealed her 
divine face to them. They have not entered the holy 



54 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

of holies in the temple of Creation, for they see parts 
only, and do not perceive the whole ; they overlook 
the quietly working tendencies of the whole. They 
misinterpret the meaning of the partial truths that 
happened to come under their observation. 

Moral truth can be felt. Therefore let religious 
mysticism gain hold of man so as to make him feel 
the truth of the moral law even before he is able to 
understand it. 

The moral feeling is man's conscience. The moral 
law and man's trust in the truth of the moral law 
must not be planted into the reasoning faculty of man 
only, it must be planted by example and instruction 
into his heart long before the reasoning faculty of his 
mind is developed. It must be made part of his in- 
most soul long before he commences to study, to 
learn, and to observe. It must be the basis of his 
whole being, and the determining factor of his will. 

If the moral law were merely superadded in later 
life, if its presence in our minds rested upon abstract 
conclusions only, upon logical arguments and syl- 
logisms, how uncertain, how precarious would its in- 
fluence be upon our lives. Rational insight must 
come to strengthen the moral truth of our soul, but 
its roots must be deeply buried in the core of our 
heart. Science will come to explain what conscience 
is, and why conscience is right in this or in that case, 
science will also assist us to correct an erring con- 
science, but if the basis of a man's character has not 
been laid in early childhood, science will come too 
late to benefit him through moralizing arguments. 
A conscience that is grounded upon ratiocination only, 
is weak in comparison to a conscience that permeates 
the whole being of a man, his emotions, his will, and 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE, 55 

his understanding ; his heart as well as his head. 
Conscience must be, as we say in popular speech, our 
"second nature" — yea, it must be our ''first nature," 
so that in all situations of life, in tribulations, and in 
temptations it will well up unconsciously with an 
original and irresistible power, even before we can 
reason about the proper course of our actions. 

The tempter approaches us always in the name of 
science, but his arguments are not science, they are 
pseudo science. The tempter says : ''Do not be fool- 
ish, be wise. The criminals are convicted not for 
their crimes but because they were fools ; they were 
not shrewd enough to escape the consequences of their 
deed. Be wise, be cunning enough, and thou wilt out- 
wit all the world." There is no criminal who did not 
think himself wise enough to escape the law, and if 
he regrets at all, he will commonly regret not the deed 
but one or the other of his mistakes which, as he sup- 
poses, betrayed him. The criminal tries to remove 
the vestiges of his deed ; yet the acts done to this 
purpose become new and powerful witnesses against 
him. They, chiefly, become the traitors that deliver 
him to the judge. 

Do not be deceived by the pseudo-wisdom of your 
thoughts that lead you into temptation. They will 
lead you into ruin, if you follow them. Do not be 
deceived by the escape of evil-doers from their legal 
punishment ; they carry a punishment within them 
which is worse than the penitentiary. Neither be 
deceived by the success of the unprincipled. Many of 
those whom you suppose to be morally depraved, are 
perhaps after all not so unscrupulous as you think. 
They may have virtues and abilities, strength of will, 
power of concentration, industry, intelligence, fore- 



56 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

sight in business combinations, of which you think 
little, but which meet the wants of their time and serve 
the common good. Such men succeeded, perhaps, in 
spite of those faults in their characters to which you 
erroneously attributed their success. If they are really 
unprincipled, and are successful in their enterprises, 
do not judge of them before you have seen the fulfill- 
ment of their destiny. 

The royal psalmist of Israel, the shepherd boy, who 
was a poet and at the same time a hero, who became 
the king of his nation because he treated even his 
enemies with justice, had during his career often seen 
the unprincipled succeed, and so he sang : 

I have seen the wicked in great power and spreading himself like a green 
bay tree. 

But David continues : 

Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not ; yea I sought him but he could not 
be found. 

Mark the perfect man and behold the upright, for the end of that man is 
peace. 

It may seem to you as if crooked means were better 
than straightforward truth, as if small trickery and 
well-calculated deceptions would gain the victory over 
the simplicity of honest dealing. It may seem so to you 
and it may seem so to your friends and advisers. It 
is not ! Truth and justice are always stronger than the 
strongest lies. And if you do not understand it, be- 
lieve it and act accordingly. 

I do not mean to say that if your cause is just, if 
you are morally good and honest in your purpose, that 
truth and j ustice will come down like gods from heaven 
to assist you. O, no ! You must fight for truth and 
you must stand up for justice with all your abilities and 
foresight. What I mean to inculcate is not blind 
confidence in the victory of truth and justice, as if they 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 57 

intended actually to appear on earth to work for you, 
instead of your working for them : I mean to say that, 
under all circumstances, falsity, untruth, injustice, and 
all immoral means, however cunningly they maybe de- 
vised, are the most dangerous allies. Whoever as- 
sociates with them will be sure to go to wreck and 
ruin. The way to success, to a final and solid success 
is only that steep and thorny path on which virtue led 
the Greek hero to Olympus. Because strait is the gate, 
and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life and few 
there be that find it. 



THE UNITY OF TRUTH. 



Truth, thou art but one. Thou mayest appear to 
us now stern and now mild, yet thou remainest always 
the same. Thou blessest him that loves thee, thou 
revealest thy nature to those that seek thee, thou 
hidest thy countenance from him that disregards thee, 
and thou punishest him that hateth thee. But whether 
it is life or death thou givest, whether thy dispensations 
are curses or blessings, thou remainest always the same, 
thou art never in contradiction with thyself ; thy curses 
affirm thy blessings, and thy rewards show the justice 
of thy punishments. Thou art one from eternity to 
eternity; and there is no second truth beside thee. 

There was a strange superstition among the learned 
of the middle ages. The Schoolmen believed in the 
duality of truth. Something might be true, they main- 
tained, in philosophy, which was not true in theology ; 
a religious truth might be true so far as religion was con- 
cerned, but it might be wrong in the province of sci- 
ence, and vice versa a scientific truth might be an 
error in the province of religion. 

The Nation of August 7th, i8go, contains a criti- 
cism by an able pen of the aim which is pursued by 
The Open Court. But the criticism is written from 
the standpoint that the duality of truth is a matter of 
course ; whereas it is merely a modernised reminis- 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 59 

cence of the scholastic doctrine that that which is true 
in science will not be true in religion. 
We are told : 

"The profession of The Open Court is to make an 'effort to 
conciliate religion with science.' Is this wise? Is it not an en- 
deavor to reach a foredetermined conclusion ? . . . Does not such 
a struggle imply a defect of intellectual integrity and tend to un- 
dermine the whole moral health ? . . . Religion, to be true to itself, 
should demand the unconditional surrender of free-thinking. Sci- 
ence, true to itself, cannot listen to such a demand for an instant. 
. . . Why should not religion and science seek each a self-devel- 
opment in its own interest ?" 

It is true enough that many religious doctrines 
stand in flat contradiction to certain propositions that 
have been firmly established by science ; and the 
churches that proclaim and teach these doctrines do 
not even think of changing them. There are dogmas 
that defy all rules of sound logic, and yet they are re- 
tained ; they are cherished as if they were sacred 
truth. But church doctrines and dogmas are not 
religion ; church doctrines and dogmas are traditions. 
They may contain many good things but they may 
also contain errors, and it is our holy and religious 
duty to examine them, to winnow them so as to sepa- 
rate the good wheat from the useless chaff. 

Let us obey the rule of the apostle, to hold fast 
only that and all that which is good. And what is 
good ? Let us inquire of Truth for an answer. That 
is good which agrees with truth. Good is not that 
which pleases your fancy, however lofty and noble 
your imagination, and however better, grander, or 
sweeter than the stern facts of reality you may deem 
it to be. You will find that in the end all things that 
appear good, but are not in accord with truth, are 
elusive : they will be discovered to be bad \ usually 



6o HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

they are worse than those things which are bad and 
appear so to us at first sight. 

What is religion ? Religion is our inmost self ; it 
is the sum total of all our knowledge applied to con- 
duct. It is the highest ideal of our aspirations, in 
obedience to which we undertake to build our lives. 
Religion in one word is truth itself. Religion is dif- 
ferent from science in so far as it is more than scien- 
tific truth ; it is applied truth. Religion does not con- 
sist of dogmas, nor does the Religion of Science consist 
of scientific formulas. Scientific formulas, if not applied 
to a moral purpose, are dead letters to religion, for 
religion is not a formulation of truth, but it is living 
the truth. True religion is, and all religion ought to 
be what Christ said of himself and of his mission, 
*'the way, the truth, and the life." 

If a teacher tells his pupil never to be satisfied with 
bis work until the result when examined agrees with 
the requirements, and to work his examples over until 
th^y come out right ; is that a predetermined conclu- 
sion ? In a certain sense it is, but not in the sense 
our critic proposes. If objection is made to a duality 
of truth, and if it is maintained that religion and scien- 
tific truth cannot contradict each other, is that an 
effort which " implies a defect of intellectual integrity 
and tends to undermine the whole moral health"? 
Just the contrary ; it is the sole basis of intellectual 
integrity, it is the indispensable condition of all moral 
health. 

''Religion to be true to itself should demand," 
and that religion which The Open Court proposes, 
does demand not "an unconditional surrender of free- 
thinking " or of free enquiry, but an unconditional de- 
votion to truth. Does science demand free-thinking? 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 6i 

Perhaps the answer may be ''yes," and there can be 
no objection provided that free-thinking means free 
enquiry and the absence of all compulsion. But the 
free-thinking that is demanded by science means at the 
same time an absolute obedience to the laws of thought. 
The sam.e free-thinking, which is at the same time 
an unconditional surrender to truth, is the cardinal 
demand of religion. The great reformer Martin Luther 
called it the freedom of conscience and considered it 
as the most precious prerogative of a Christian. 

TJie Ope?i Court does not propose to conciliate 
science with certain Christian or Mosaic or Buddhistic 
doctrines. This would be absurd and such an under- 
taking would justly deserve a severe criticism, for it 
would be truly a predetermined conclusion in the 
sense that our critic intends. It would ' ' imply a defect 
of intellectual integrity and undermine the moral 
health." Autocracy and individualism are not recon- 
cilable, but socialism and individualism are reconcil- 
able. Order and liberty are not such deadly enemies 
as may appear at first sight. Superstition and science 
are irreconcilable, but religion and science are not 
irreconcilable. Indeed, the history of religious progress 
is a constant conciliation between science and religion. 

Religion and science, it is maintained, must ''seek 
each a self-development in its own interest." Cer- 
tainly it must, but this does not prevent that which 
we deem to be religious truth being constantly ex- 
amined before the tribunal of science, and that 
which we deem to be scientific truth being con- 
stantly referred to religion. Our critic seems to have 
no objection to religion and science coming into accord, 
but he proposes to wait until they approach comple- 
tion. If this maxim were universally adopted, there 



62 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

would be no progress in the development of religion. 
Is not '' completion " a very relative state ? Waiting 
for completion would be about equivalent to stopping 
all social reform until mankind has reached the mil- 
lennium. Every social reform is a step onward along 
the path to the millennium, and every conciliation be- 
tween science and religion is a step onward in the 
revelation of living truth. 

The religion of the middle ages was a religion of 
dualism, it proposed the duality of truth. The religion 
of the future will be a religion of Monism ; and what 
means Monism? Monism means unity of truth. Truth 
is invincible. It never contradicts itself, for there is 
but one truth and that one truth is eternal. 



LIVING THE TRUTH. 



They are but few who do the thinking of mankind, 
and the great masses are led by the few sometimes 
in the right, sometimes in the wrong direction. It 
matters httle whether this is to be regretted or not, 
it remains a fact and must be faced. Yet this state 
of things makes every independent thinker the more 
valuable. Every man who is an independent thinker 
is a power in his sphere, and will contribute a share 
to the further evolution of thought in humanity. 

The intellectual battles of mankind are mostly 
fought out by a few leaders, and the great mass is 
ready to follow those who have been successful in the 
fight. Nevertheless we must recognise that thought 
has increased ; and there are many unmistakable symp- 
toms that humanity is making progress at an increas- 
m% ratio. This lets us hope that the misery unneces- 
sarily and foolishly produced by improvidence or ignor- 
ance will be lessened and that knowledge will spread 
together with a general good-will among men. This 
is the aim of thought, na}^ it is its necessary result. 

Thought is not mere sport. Thought is the most 
important, the most practical, the most indispensable 
activity of man. Thought is the savior of mankind, 
and the salvation of man is the goal of the aspirations 
of those who struggle against superstition and indiffer- 
ence. 



64 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

I do not hesitate to say that indifference is worse 
than superstition. I am always glad to meet a think- 
ing man who is earnest in his defense of some old 
creed, if he is only honest. However much I may 
differ from his views I shall always treat him with the 
respect due to sincerity. Difference of opinion must 
never induce us to set aside justice ; and after all a 
man who is sincere and has an independent convic- 
tion, even though his conviction be utterly wrong, 
does a greater service to progress than the indifferent 
man who will always belong to that party which hap- 
pens to be the fashion of the day. Indifference more 
than error hinders progress. 

I see the thinkers of mankind, few though they are, 
divided into two camps. The champions of the one 
trust in progress and work for constant amelioration ; 
the champions of the other believe that innovations 
are extremely dangerous, and the best thing for hu- 
manity would be to remain stationary. Those of 
the latter class will concede perhaps that in the do- 
main of industry and in the sciences progress must 
be made, but they do not believe in the progress of 
religion. Their religion is to them perfection, it re- 
presents in their minds absolute truth, and progress of 
absolute truth, progress of something that is already 
perfection, is, as a matter of course, gilding refined 
gold. 

The battle waxes hot between the two parties, the 
former is strong through its alliance with scientific 
aspirations, but the latter is still in the majority. It 
is in possession of the great mass of indifferent people ; 
and the champions of progress may often become de- 
spondent so as to give up all hope of a final victory. 
Ignorance seems stronger than knowledge and folly 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 65 

more powerful than wisdom. In a moment of such 
despair Schiller is said to have exclaimed : '^Against 
stupidity fight even Gods in vain." 

Who among us when confronted with unconquer- 
able superstitions, has not had such sentiments at one 
moment of his life or another? And now I ask, can we 
know which party in the end will be victorious? 
Can we know the means by which alone a victory is 
to be achieved? Let me in a few words indicate the 
answer which I trust is very simple in the general plan 
of its main idea, and yet so ver}^ complex in its ap- 
plication that we could philosophize on the subject as 
long as we live. Indeed, mankind does philosophize 
on the subject and has never as yet got tired of it. 
And I suppose it never will, for here lies the object of 
all science, of all knowledge, of all philosophy. 

What will conquer in the end ? Truth will con- 
quer in the end. By what means will truth conquer ? 
By being truth, or in other words by morality. That 
party will conquer, be it ever so weak in numbers, be 
it ever so badly represented, that is one with truth. 
But it is not sufficient merely to know the truth. Truth 
must be lived. 

Only by living the truth shall we be able to con- 
quer the world. Therefore it is necessary to recog- 
nize the all-importance of morality. The ethical prob- 
lem (as I have often said on other occasions) is the 
burning question of the day. To know the truth, to 
preach the truth, and also to denounce the untruth of 
superstitions is ver}- important ; but it is more im.- 
portant to live the truth. 

If you have two men, one of whom knows the 
truth but does not live it, while the other lives the 
truth but does not know it ; who must be regarded as 



66 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE, 

nearer the truth ? Surely he who ignorant of the truth 
Hves it, and not he who knowing the truth does not. 

What is truth ? Truth is agreement with the facts 
of reality. Truth accordingly is not a mere negation 
of untruth, not a mere rejection of superstitions. Truth 
is positive, it is the correct recognition of facts as well 
as of the laws that live in the facts and have been ab- 
stracted therefrom by science. Morality is the agree- 
ment of our actions with truth, and the most important 
truths for the regulation of men's actions are the laws 
which rule the relations between man and man form- 
ing the conditions of human society. 

The strength of the many organisations that still 
hold to antiquated superstitions lies in the fact that 
after all they try their best to obey the moral laws. 
And the weakness of many free-thinking persons as 
well as organisations, lies in their neglect of ethics, 
They do not feel the urgency of demanding strictness 
in morals ; they are perhaps not exactly immoral but 
they are indifferent about the claims of morality. 

The moral laws have been formulated by Religion 
first in mythological expressions ; but the mythology 
of Religion is slowly changing into a scientific concep- 
tion of facts. Mythology is fiction, it preaches the 
truth in parables. Nevertheless it contains actual 
truth. And the religious parables are not less true, 
they are more true than the unthinking believers im- 
agine. The truth of these parables is grander, subimer, 
higher than the similes in which they are expressed. 

Here lies the secret of success. The church has 
grown into existence and has attained its power be- 
cause it was the ethical teacher of mankind in the 
past. On the one hand it appears that the church re- 
fuses to progress, and on the other hand progressive 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 67 

thought has heretofore too much neglected to become 
practical or in other words to push the moral applica- 
tions of truth. 

We stand now before a crisis : Either the churches 
will reform ; they will cease to believe in supersti- 
tions; they will acknowledge truth and the correctness 
of the scientific methods of reaching truth; in one 
word they will become secular institutions, institutions 
adapted to the moral wants of the world we live in ; 
in which case they will remain the ethical teachers of 
mankind; or those institutions which represent pro- 
gressive thought and have recognized truth and the 
rational means of reaching truth, will more and more 
inculcate the practical applications of truth ; and if 
they do, they will become the moral teachers of man- 
kind. 

Truth must conquer in the end; but knowing the 
truth i5 not as yet sufficient ; it is living the truth which 
will gain the victory. 



THANKSGIVING-DAY. 



As THE sun rises to-day from the depths of the At- 
lantic, he beholds a great and prosperous nation cele- 
brating one of the most beautiful festivals of the year. 
It is the day of giving thanks for all the bounties which 
Nature, our common mother, has showered upon us 
in the year gone by. It is the day of giving thanks 
for the rich harvest now being gathered into the barns 
of the farmer, and which we who are not farmers, 
shall none the less enjoy. For all of us, the merchant 
and the artisan, the manufacturer and the banker, 
the artist and the scholar, the soldier and the sailor, 
all of us who make an honest living, depend ulti- 
mately on the blessings that Nature bestows upon 
us, the fruits that grow in the fields, and the meat that 
she provides. 

It is true that we must work for it. In the sweat of 
our face we must eat our bread. But all our labor 
would be in vain if Nature ceased to yield the harvest 
which in abundance she annually offers. 

* * * 

Considering the state of affairs in this light, we 
must have a feeling of pride and at the same time of 
modesty. Of pride, because our prosperity, our prop- 
erty, our life with all its future hopes, are the result of 
our own work ; what we are is the product of our own 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 69 

and our forefathers' endeavors. Of modest}^, because 
all our labor would be in vain if that omnipotent power 
of natural forces did not continually carry along upon 
its mighty billows of life the courageous boats of think- 
ing beings. 

We must learn to know, that what we are, we are 
through nature only ; for we ourselves are but parts of 
that great power in which we live and move and have 
our being. 

Our fathers in their gratitude called that power of 
omnipotent Nature God, and Christ taught us to re- 
vere it in child-like love as a Father. If we have ceased 
to believe in a humanized Deity, if we no longer adopt 
the idea of a personal God, we must not forget that 
there is a great truth in the words of the psalmist who 
sings : 

Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build 
it ; except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in 
vain. 

It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the 
bread of sorrows : for so he giveth his beloved sleep. 

It is a noble feature in man's nature that prompts 
him to celebrate great events and to remember the 
momentous days of his existence. But our feasting 
must not consist of good eating and drinking alone. 
Our festivals must be a consecration of our life. Festi- 
vals, if celebrated in a truly humane spirit, will elevate 
man's actions by thought and ennoble his work by re- 
flection. 

" 'Tis that alone which makes mankind — 
And 'tis the purpose of man's reason 
That he consider in his mind 
His handiwork of every season." 

You who are happy, you who look back upon a year 
that has yielded its harvest, rejoice in the blessings of 



70 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

Nature, rejoice in the health of life, rejoice that you 
behold this day ! Be thankful for the bounties you 
have received and close not the doors of charity to 
the needy and the poor who are less fortunate than 
yourselves ! 

The unfortunate, the sick, the poor are invited to 
join in the general joy and to rejoice in the general 
prosperity of our country, in the glorious growth of 
our nation, and in the noticeable progress of all man- 
kind which apparently leads more and more to higher 
and purer ideals of the universal brotherhood of man. 

Those who are prosperous will celebrate this sacred 
day with a grateful mind, sympathetic towards those 
who are stricken with the many ills that flesh is heir 
to. Let us remember our own weakness, let us con- 
sider that what we are we are not of ourselves. Thus 
we shall learn the wisdom of modesty that teaches us 
to look upon the forlorn and shipwrecked as brothers, 
so that we shall lend them a helping hand. Let us 
assist the fallen and downtrodden in the right spirit, 
not in the arrogance of our own merits, of our own 
good luck and fortune, but in the fraternal love of a 
pure-minded and heartfelt kindness. 

Blessed be the sun that shines upon this day, and 
blessed be his return in all future years. Blessed be 
the country that yields us the fruit upon which we 
live, and blessed be that great nation that flourishes 
in this wonderful land of liberty. May the highest 
ideals we cherish, be realized in her destinies ! 



CHRISTMAS. 



The Christmas bells will soon chime and with their 
harmonious peals they will bring joy and merriment 
into every household. There is a secret charm in the 
celebration of this holy festival. It is wonderful what 
sacred gladness attaches to the sight of the glorious 
tree that remains green in winter-time, when it is 
decked with glittering ornaments and its many can- 
dles shed their joyous light upon the circles of frolick- 
ing children with roseate cheeks and beaming eyes ! 

What is the mystery of this jubilant feast, and how 
is it possible that wherever it has been introduced, 
there it will remain as the dearest and most cherished 
of all holidays ? 

First Christmas was celebrated as Yule-tide by the 
old Teutons, especially by the most northern tribes of 
the great Teutonic family, the Norsemen and the Sax- 
ons, as the return of the sun, as salvation in midst of 
anxieties and troubles, as the victory of light over 
darkness. As many other feasts so Christmas, and 
Christmas, it seems, more than others, is a festival of 
natural religion. Then the Christians adopted it and 
very appropriately selected it as the memorial day of 
the birth of the Saviour. Now it is celebrated by Chris- 
tians and Pagans, by Jews and Gentiles, by all who 
came in contact with Saxons or Germans, or their 
kindred in the North. No one can withdraw from the 



72 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

sacred spell that the worship of Nature exercises 
even now upon our minds. Christians like to forget 
that their Christmas tree is an old pagan symbol of 
the world. It is Ygdrasil, under the branches of which 
the three norns of the present, the past, and the fu- 
ture are sitting, lisping runes and weaving the fates 
of the Universe. There is Urd's well at the roots of 
the holy tree and its water is sacred. The norns 
spray the water upon the branches of Ygdrasil which 
sinks dovv^n into our valleys as dew. This keeps the 
tree ever green and strong. 

The festive Yule tide has been a holy season to our 
Teutonic ancestors since times immemorial; since they 
settled in their northern homes in Europe, which their 
descendants, the Norwegians, the Danes, the Dutch, 
the English, and the Germans still inhabit. The drear- 
iest days of the year, when darkness and frost with 
snow and ice were most oppressive, became by reac- 
tion as it were the most joyful time. 

In the northern parts of Norway the sun disap- 
pears entirely towards the close of December, and 
when after an absence of two nights or more it rose 
for a short time on the horizon, it was saluted with 
bonfires lit with yule-logs, with festive processions, 
with fir-trees illuminated with candles, with merry- 
making and family feasts of all kinds. 

The mistletoe which grows on holy oak-trees and 
remains green in winter-time, whose seed was sup- 
posed to have fallen from heaven, was the sun- god 
Baldur's sacred plant. With mistletoe therefore the 
houses were decorated, and the greeting under the 
mistletoe was all love and friendship in the name of 
Odin's fairest and most righteous son. Baldur had 
been killed by the dark and gloomy Hoedur, but he 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 



73 



was restored to life again. With Baldur all nature re- 
ceived new life, and all mankind rejoiced in him. 

When Christianity was introduced, how could a 
better day for the celebration of Christ's nativity be 
selected than Baldur's festive day. The birthday of 
Jesus was not celebrated in the early church, and 
there is not even the faintest legendary account re- 
garding its date. Our Teutonic ancestors succeeded 
in settling this problem in favor of their dear Yule-tide 
by a quotation from the scriptures. John the Baptist 
says as to his relation to Christ : "^ He must increase 
but I must decrease." (John iii. 30.) Accordingly, 
St. John's day was fixed upon the 24th of June when 
the days begin to decrease, and Christ's upon 25th of 
December when the days begin to increase again. 

Yule-tide lost none of its charms when it was 
changed into Christmas. On the contrary, the sacred 
jays Weihnacht gained in spiritual depth and import- 
ance, preserving all the while the old pagan ceremon- 
ies that symbolize the immortality of light and life. 

Christmas is not a feast of any special creed or na- 
tionality. The custom of celebrating it has spread 
from the Teutonic nations to France, and Spain, and 
Italy, and Ireland, and over the whole world. It is 
now the family feast of almost all mankind whether 
they believe in Jesus as their saviour or not. 

We keep the Christmas season as a dear and sacred 
time which in the midst of a dreary winter night re- 
minds us of the sun's return. Darkness cannot con- 
quer light, and death cannot conquer life. Christmas 
teaches us to bear up bravely in troubles, to keep up 
hope in misfortunes, to preserve the courage of life in 
the midst of struggles of cares and worries, and to 
spread joy around us so far as it is in our power. 



74 I/OMILIE3 OF SCIENCE. 

There are times so dreary that in our anxiety we 
see no hope but death. There are days so Bleak and 
wintery that we begin to despair, and encumbered 
with cares we cry, ''The evil is stronger than the 
good in this world, and the power of darkness quenches 
the glory of light." The days become shorter and 
shorter. The nights become longer and longer. A 
general corruption is prevailing and increasing ; the 
moral sense is growing debased and retrogression 
seems all but universal. 

O ye of little faith ! Be of good cheer, and in the 
midst of all your trouble and worry celebrate a joyous 
Christmas. For Christmas is the commemoration of the 
holy morn that greets us after the longest night. It 
reminds us of the undying hope, that light and life are 
eternal. It is true that life is a world of woe, full of 
toil and of pain. Nevertheless, there is a saviour born 
into the world ; and this saviour is the son of man. The 
ideal son of man lies as yet in the cradle. But we know 
that he will grow ; he will rescue the world from those 
troubles which are caused by folly and crime ; he will 
elevate mankind through purity and justice ; and he 
will consecrate life and the struggle for life through 
the noble aims which more and more will become con- 
scious ideals in the minds of men. 



REVELATION. 



In my childhood I was told that there were two 
kinds of divine revelation. God had revealed him- 
self (i) in Nature, and (2) in the Scriptures. Neither 
revelation was easy to decipher and interpret, but God 
always aids the endeavors of the upright, and the 
one revelation would assist us in understanding the 
other. 

There is, too, according to the catechisms, a third 
kind of revelation : the Conscience of Man. Man has 
an instinctive recognition of that which is right and 
that which is wrong, and this instinct is sometimes 
a most wonderful and accurate guide, although there 
are many cases in which it leads astray. Conscience, 
we are told, is the voice of God, and the behests 
of conscience we are bound to obey, although we 
must be on our guard lest conscience be perverted by 
errors and superstitions. 

These three revelations of God must be one and 
the same. If they are true and reliable they must 
agree, and wherever they do not agree our interpre- 
tation of one of them, or of two, or of all them, is 
wrong. As a matter of fact, we find that the three 
conflict, and we must accordingly investigate which of 
the three is the most reliable. 

The dogmatic Christian claims that the Bible is 
the most reliable ; and in all religious matters the 



76 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

Bible must be considered as the ultimate authority. 
Yet, whatever precious doctrines the Bible may con- 
tain, it can be considered as divine only in so far as 
it is true, and God cannot proclaim one truth in na- 
ture, and another truth in the Scriptures. He cannot 
be one God to all the world, and another God to a few 
prophets. God might reveal himself more fully to 
those who are maturer in mind, whose souls are fur- 
ther advanced in moral and mental growth, for God 
reveals himself to the extent that we search for him, 
and are able to comprehend the truth. Yet the two 
revelations should never be contradictory. They might 
be different in degree, but not in kind. 

Of the three divine revelations there is but one that 
is consistent, one that never contradicts itself, that 
has remained unchanged, and will remain so forever. 
That is the revelation of God in Nature. There is 
order in nature, and law rules supreme. All natural 
phenomena are in all their glorious variety so many 
instances of the oneness that pervades nature, and 
among all the natural phenomena, the most wonderful 
revelation of God appears in man ; and in that which 
is most human in man, in language, and in thought. 
Every truth is divine, every truth is a revelation, and 
every scripture thus inspired will prove useful in work- 
ing out righteousness. Therefore we agree with the 
apostle when he says : 

Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, 
for reproof, for correction, for instruction, which is in righteous- 
ness : that the man of God may be complete, furnished completely 
unto every good work.-ii. thim,, 3, 16. 17. 

It is not the Bible alone which is a revelation of 
God, but the Vedas, the Zendavesta, Homer, the 
Koran, the Edda ; Shakespeare, and Goethe ; and 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 77 

Kant and Darwin, and all the scientists. All the 
scriptures, all the literatures of all people so far as 
they contain thoughts that are noble and elevating, 
and beautiful and true — they are all revelations of 
God. In so far as a book contains errors it is not de- 
vine, it is no revelation of God, whether it be incor- 
porated in the biblical canon or not. 

The Bible was considered by the old Hebrews in 
this light, for the Old Testament is nothing but a 
collection of the Hebrew literature up to a certain 
date. Had Goethe lived among the Jews at the time 
of David, and had the anachronism been possible 
that he had written his Faust at that time; Goethe's 
Faust would be one of the canonical books in the 
Bible of to-day. 

Conscience, it is true, is a revelation of God; but 
what is conscience but the development of the ethical 
instinct in man. 

Experience has taught man that certain acts that 
promise to be pleasant at first, will cause regret after- 
wards; that the injury done to others will not bring 
to him the benefit he expected, but may even entail 
harm which he never thought of. Experience will 
teach him that self-denial and unflinching love of truth, 
even where they appear very obnoxious, will in the 
end prove to be the best. Conscience accordingly is 
ultimately based upon experience, not only of our- 
selves, but of parents and teachers. It is partty an 
inherited tendency ; partly it is based upon all the re- 
membrances of our life from earliest childhood. The 
examples given us by beloved and respected persons, 
by our elders and by our friends, are written in our 
souls and will consciously and unconsciously influence 
our actions. It is neither uncommon nor strange that 



78 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

the voice of man's conscience is often perverted, by- 
bad examples and insufficient or wrong instruction. As 
the knowledge of the medicine man is the rude be- 
ginning of science; so is conscience a natural product 
which needs refinement and culture by methodical 
education. 

The only direct and reliable revelation of God is 
to be found in the facts of nature ; and all the other 
revelations in the Scriptures, and in conscience, are but 
parts of this one and only true revelation. They are 
true only in so far as they agree and represent this \ 
and the truth of this can be revised again and again. 
The book of nature is open to every one, and in the 
places where to-day we understand its disclosures im- 
perfectly, we can hope that to-morrow by more careful 
observations and closer investigations, we shall better 
comprehend its meaning. 

Truth is the exactness with which the harmony of 
cosmic order is represented in the mind of a thinking 
being ; truth is the mark of divine dignity in man, 
through truth and truthfulness we become children of 
God, and truth is the saviour of all evil. 



GOD. 



Who is God and what is God ? is a question that 
is raised by both reHgious and irreligious people ; 
and most di^erent answers are given. Every one 
of us has perhaps his own and peculiar opinion 
about God ; some of us are theists, some pantheists, 
some atheists, and there are in the history of religion 
and philosophy, so far as I can judge, not two thinkers 
who fully agree upon the subject. Shades of differ- 
ences are visible everywhere. 

I do not intend to discuss any one of the many 
conceptions of God ; nor do I intend to preach either 
Theism, or Atheism, or Pantheism. All I ask is the 
use of the word God in the sense of ''the ultimate 
authority in conformity to which man regulates his 
actions." Of those who allow their actions to be de- 
termined by the first impulse that comes over them, 
I would say, that whim is their God. Those who are 
swayed by egotism, we say that self is their deity. 
There are others whose sole principle of conduct is 
the pursuit of pleasures : their God is happiness. 
Others still may possess a moral ideal ; the endeavor 
to be obedient to their duties : their God would be 
duty. 

After this preliminary definition of God, we put 
the question : Is there any way of ascertaining the na- 
ture of God, so that all men of different opinions may 



8o HOM/L/ES OF SCIENCE. 

be led to the recognition of one God, who is the only 
true God, beside whom all other Gods are mere idols ? 
In other words. Is the authority in conformity with 
which man regulates his conduct merely his private 
pleasure, is it purely subjective in its nature, or is it a 
power that is above us, that is mightier than our- 
selves, that enforces obedience and wrecks those who 
dare to disregard it? Is that saying of Antisthenes 
true, ''The Gods of the people are many, but the God 
of nature is one ?" 

The answer to this question is simple, and can 
easily be deduced from experience. I cannot at all 
act as I please, but have to regulate my actions ac- 
cording to the facts of nature. If I attempt to walk 
on the water I shall sink ; if I try to fly from the top 
of my house to the roof of my neighbor's house across 
the street, I shall fall. Natural laws will not be altered 
on my account, and I shall not be able to fashion 
them so as to suit my purposes. However, I can 
accommodate myself to the facts of nature, I can obey 
the natural laws, and if I do so, it will be to my own 
benefit. The more intimately man is acquainted with 
nature, the more perfectly he adapts himself to the 
order of nature, the wider will be his dominion. In 
the measure in which he becomes more obedient to 
the authority of natural laws, the more powerful, the 
more independent, the more free will man be. 

Schiller said : 

" Within your will let deity reside 
And God descendeth from his throne." 

" [Nehmt die Gottheit auf in euren Willen 
Und sie steigt von ihrem Weltenthron,] 

The natural laws of the physical world, gravita- 
tion, mechanical laws, physical laws, biological laws, 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 81 

may appear to the present generation plain and pal- 
pable facts of nature, yet it took centuries to sum up 
the facts in laws and to state some of them in simple 
terms. The men who succeeded in stating them in 
simple terms were prophetic geniuses, such as Coper- 
nicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Huyghens, Darwin, 
and others ; the results of their labors are discoveries 
of a divine inspiration, and are a revelation of the 
eternal and universal order of nature. 

Besides the physical laws of nature, there are the 
sociological laws that prevail in the higher kingdoms 
of living organisms, and in the societies which greater 
numbers of single individuals unite. Every one of 
us is a member of a community ; and again all the 
communities of human beings are closely bound to- 
gether, however great the distance in which they 
dwell, by certain relations, by common interests, and 
mutual sympathies. These sociological laws are not 
a product of well calculated intentions, but they are 
of a natural growth ; the evolution of the social affairs 
of mankind is deeply rooted in the conditions of 
things. 

Now every fact of science stated as a law has its 
practical side ; it teaches us how to behave in certain 
conditions. There is no knowledge but it can be 
framed in the shape of a moral command. The tables 
of arithmetic are mere statements of fact ; but every 
one of them is a most valuable ethical law : it is a 
guide for our actions and a rule of conduct. 

Every child knows that the ethics of arithmetic 
cannot be changed, it is a sovereign power above 
us. Yet we can make that royal authority descend 
from its throne by obedience to its behests, we can 
adapt our calculations to it, and thus we shall partake 



82 lIOMfLIES OF SCIENCE. 

of its sovereignty. The more accurately and the 
purer truth dwells in our minds, the more will our 
souls grow divine, and the more will we bear in our- 
selves the image of God. There is no knowledge 
that does not make us purer, and no correct applica- 
tion of knowledge that does not make us more divine. 
But among all the natural laws that it behooves a 
man to know and to obey, are the laws of human life, 
the relations among human beings, and the aspira- 
tions of human ideals. It is here where the revelation 
of God appears in its grandest, its most beautiful, and 
its holiest form. 

How many people are there that understand that 
these laws are no less cogent and irrefragable than 
the laws of the multiplication tables ! How many 
imagine that they can break these laws with impunity. 
Let us do evil, they say, that good may come from it. 

The prophet Hosea says : "People are destroyed 
from lack of knowledge," and these words are true even 
to-day. People injure themselves and others mostly 
from ignorance and from ill-will, which is a necessary 
result of ignorance. Would not the brute cease to be 
brutish if it were endowed with human reason? 

Let us open our eyes to see and prepare our minds 
to learn the ordinances of the divine authority that 
shapes the destinies of our life. The better we observe 
them, the clearer we understand them, and the more 
promptly we obey them, the sweeter will be the bless- 
ings that come upon our lives, the greater will be the 
advance of humanity, and the nobler will appear the 
divinity of mankind. 



DESIGN IN NATURE. 



At a meeting of a scientific club lately, a discussion 
was held on the subject : "Is evolution directed by in- 
telligence ? " This question touches the very heart 
of religion and' science ; and we cannot shirk it if we 
desire to attain to any clearness and comprehensive- 
ness of view concerning the most vital problems of 
human existence. 

Before we can answer the question proposed, we 
must first ask what do we understand by intelligence. 
We must analyze its meaning and separate it into the 
elements of which it consists. 

Intelligence comprises two elements : (i) We mean 
by intelligence design, plan, order, harmony, con- 
formity to law, or Gesetzmdssigkeit ; and (2) when 
speaking of intelligence we think that there is attached 
to it the element of feeling or consciousness. 

Feeling by itself has nothing to do with intelli^ 
gence ; yet consciousness has : consciousness is in- 
telligent feeling. A single feeling, a pain or a pleas- 
ure, as long as it remains isolated cannot be called in- 
telligent ; yet it acquires a meaning as soon as it re- 
fers to one or several other feelings. For thus feelings 
become representations of the surrounding conditions 
that produce feelings. Consciousness is nothing but 
a co-ordination of many feelings into one harmonious 



84 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

state. Beings in possession of conscious intelligence 
we call persons. 

Now we ask, Can there be design which is not con- 
nected with feeling? Can there be order or plan with- 
out a conscious being who made the plan? We say, 
Yes. 

The crystallization of a snowflake is made with 
wonderful exactness, in agreement with mathematical 
law. Is this formation of snow-crystal manufactured 
with purposive will, by a personal being ? A mathe- 
matician knows that the regularity of forms necessarily 
depends upon the laws of form, upon the same in- 
trinsic order which is present in the multiplication 
table; it depends upon the arithmetical relations among 
the numbers. 

Is a personal intelligence necessary for creating 
the laws that produce the harmony of arithmetical 
proportions ? Is a personal intelligence necessary for 
making the angles of equilateral triangles equal ? Cer- 
tainly it is not. 

Suppose that some substance crystallizes at a given 
angle. Necessarily it will form regular figures shaped 
according to some special plan. 

Suppose again that certain cells of organized sub- 
stance, plant-cells or animal-cells, perform special 
functions, will they not in their growth exhibit a cer- 
tain plan in conformity to their nature not otherwise 
than a crystal ? They will, or rather they must ; or 
can we believe that the interference of personal in- 
telligence is necessary to apply the plan to the growth 
of organized substance ? Organization is so to say 
crystallization of living substance ; it is growth in con- 
formity to law. 

The growth of a child takes place unconsciously, 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 85 

not otherwise than the growth of a flower. The con- 
sciousness developed in the former is the product, 
not the condition of its development ; it is the product 
of organization. The consciousness of man is the 
highest kind of systematic co-ordination of feeling that 
we know of, and therefore we say that he is endowed 
with intelligence. Man is a person. 

Personality is not the annihilation of the mechan- 
ical law ; yet through the introduction of feeling the 
mechanical law that governs the changes and innumer- 
able adaptations of a person, becomes so complex that 
it at first sight appears to us as an annihilation of the 
mechanical law. 

The hypothesis of a personal intelligence is not 
needed to explain either the design of nature, or the 
plan of evolution, or the gradual development of na- 
tions and individuals, which processes are all in rigid 
conformity to law. At the bottom of all cosmic order 
lies the order of mathematics, the law that twice two 
is always four. 

Personal interference is so little necessary to pro- 
duce regularity according to some design with any 
exactness, that it would even make it all but im- 
possible. If man desires the execution of some work 
with minute exactness, he has to invent a machine to 
do the work. A machine performs its work with rigid 
immutability. And a machine, what is it but an unfeel- 
ing and an unconscious, — a mechanical, — intelligence? 
Personality, what is it but the power of constantly 
renewed adaptation? Personality, therefore means 
mutability. 

Suppose a book were written and not printed ; sup- 
pose it were produced by the conscious intelligence of 
a personal being, and not mechanically by a machine ; 



86 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE, 

could we expect the same minute exactness ? As- 
suredly not. It would be witchery to adapt anything 
in close and rigid conformity to law, without machine- 
like unconscious intelligence. 

Suppose that the planets were run by some per- 
sonal being ; that they were constantly watched with 
conscious wisdom and regulated by purposive adjust- 
ment ; we could not trust our safety a moment on this 
planet. Mechanical regularity in minutest details is 
all but impossible in the work of personal intelligence. 

A machine has no feeling and possesses no con- 
scious intelligence ; yet a machine must have been in- 
vented by a conscious and premeditating intelligence. 
A machine proves the presence of a designing person 
somewhere. And the question arises : Could not the 
Cosmos be considered as a machine invented by a great 
and divine person, designed for some preconceived 
end ? 

Even though there were no objections to this rather 
child-like and antiquated anthropomorphism, this con- 
ception of thins^s would be of no use towards explain- 
ing the cosmic order. A machine is not invented by 
an inventor as a fairy-tale is conceived by a poet. A 
machine can work only if it conforms to that imper- 
sonal intelligence which we call mathematical neces- 
sity. It is the latter that makes the machine useful, 
and it is the latter that has to be explained. 

If God made the world as an inventor makes a ma- 
chine, he had to obey the laws of nature and to adapt 
his creations to the formulas of mathematics. In that 
case, however, the Creator would not be the omnipo- 
tent and supreme God; there would still be an imper- 
sonal Deity above him. In that case the Creator would 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 87 

be no less subject to the cosmic order than we poor 
mortals are. 

Show me by any convincing argument that the 
cosmic order represented in so simple a statement as 
*' twice two is four" had to be created arbitrarily by 
some conscious intelligence, and I shall willingly and 
without hesitation return to the anthropomorphic be- 
lief in a personal God — a belief which was so dear to 
me in my early youth. Yet so long as the cosmic or- 
der must be recognized as uncreated and uncreatable, 
as omnipresent and eternal, as omnipotent and irref- 
ragable, we must consider the worship of a personal 
God as pure idolatry. 

But this solution of the problem — is it not dreary 
atheism ? It is not, or it is — according to our ability 
to receive the message of the necessity, the irrefraga- 
bility of the Formal Law. 

Our theologians maintain that the order of the 
cosmos proves the existence of a deity. I maintain 
that it does more : The order of the Cosmos is itself 
divine. It does not prove that there is a God outside 
the universe who made the cosmic order ; it proves the 
presence of a God inside. 

Is the order of the Cosmos void of intelligence? It 
is without feeling, but surely not without plan or de- 
sign. The laws of nature represent design ; they are 
embodied design. The law of gravitation, for in- 
stance, does not act with consciousness, yet it rep- 
resents order. It describes the regularity of the fall 
of a stone as well as of all the motions of the heavenly 
bodies in their wonderful order. 

The immutability of the cosmic order disproves 
a supernatural God, but it proves an immanent God. 



88 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

And this God cannot be a person. He Is more than 
a person. God is called in the Old Testament the 
Eternal, he is represented as immutable. Can a per- 
son be imm.utable ? Is not personality embodied mu- 
tability, is it not adaptability to circumstances ? The 
divine order of the Cosmos as represented in Natural 
Laws stands above all mutability — unchangeable, in- 
adaptable, eternal. 

* * 

This God, the immutability of impersonal, or rather 
of superpersonal intelligence,is the condition of science 
and the basis of ethics. If natural laws were personal 
inventions which could be changed at the pleasure of 
their inventor, science would become impossible, and 
morality would become an illusion. What is morality 
but our effort to conform to the order of nature, and 
above all, to the laws that shape society ? 

This impersonal intelligence is higher than person- 
al intelligence, as much so as the laws of a country are 
infinitely higher and holier than all its citizens, its 
princes and kings not excepted. There is a rule in 
monarchies that the sovereign stands above the law. 
Is it necessary to explain that this idea is a farce, an 
illusion, a felony against the sanctity of the law? Sim- 
ilarly, the idea of a God, fashioned according to the 
personality of man, is a blasphemy of the higher God, 
of that God who alone is God, of the Deity that pass- 
eth all understanding, /. ^., all conscious reasoning and 
personal wisdom. 

The worship of a personal God is the last remnant 
of paganism. Our religious convictions can and will 
not be purified until we apperceive a glimpse of the 
grandeur of a higher view. 

There is a superhuman Deity, whose glory the 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 89 

heavens declare, and the firmament showeth his handi- 
work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night un- 
to night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor 
language where their voice is not heard. The whole 
Cosmos is permeated by eternal and divine law, by in- 
telligence, by design. 

The whole world is a glorious revelation of its im- 
manent God. Yet this revelation is concentrated in 
man's personality. He possesses, not only a conscious 
intelligence reflecting in his soul the divinity of the 
All, but also the aspiration of moral ideals inspiring 
him to conform to the cosmic order that rules supreme 
from Eternity to Eternity. 



THE CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. 



Among the conceptions of God there are three 
which have been and are still the most prevalent and 
powerful ; these three are Theism, Pantheism, and 
Atheism. 

The Theist anthropomorphises that power which 
he recognises as the authority of moral conduct, and 
looks upon it as a stern ruler or a kind father. If evils 
appear as the consequence of vice, he says : These are 
God's visitations ! And he thinks of God as teaching 
his creatures his will and enforcing his obedience, not 
by making the contrary absolutely impossible, but like 
a wise educator raising children in liberty, allowing 
them to make mistakes so as to learn by their own 
experience. 

Theism is not wrong if we keep before us the fact 
that the personality of God is an allegory ; and it 
must be granted that it is the best allegory we can 
discover. There is a world-order manifesting itself 
to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. We 
have to conform to it and there is no escape from it. 
It is omnipresent, like all natural laws ; like gravita- 
tion it is everywhere, it is bound up in all existence, 
being that something that encompasseth all our life. 



HOMILIES OF SCIEXCE. 0i 

In describing this omnipresence of God, the 
psalmist says : 

Whither shall I go from thy spirit ? or whither shall I flee 
from thy presence ? 

If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there : if I make my bed 
in hell, behold thou art there. 

If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost 
parts of the sea, 

Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall 
hold me. 

There has been made, so long as Christianity ex- 
ists and even longer, a strong opposition to the idea 
that God is, like man, an individual being, having at 
different times different passions and desires. The 
Old Testament contains the well-known passage : 
''God is not a man that he should lie ; neither the son 
of man that he should repent." 

God is as little a person as are the ideas of Good- 
ness, Beauty, and Truth ; and the passages of the Bi- 
ble in which God is described as wroth or repenting, 
or as being subject to any emotion or sentiment of a 
human character, have been understood since they 
were written, by rabbis no less than by the fathers of 
the Church, in an allegorical sense, which was not 
only appropriate because of the strength and express- 
iveness of the simile, but because it was also the lan- 
guage of the time. To speak or think of spiritual things 
otherwise than in the habits of the times would be 
equivalent to expecting that the author of Genesis 
should have known Darwin's origin of the species and 
all the details of natural history when he described in 
great poetical outlines the formation of the world and 
the origin of man out of the dust of the earth. 

The dogmatic view that God is a person and must 
be considered as a person became finally established 



92 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

as the orthodox view of the Church during the second 
and third centur}^ after Christ, and in this way all 
other views were branded as atheism. But who gave to 
a few^ narrow-minded bishops and to the theologians of 
a special school the right to impose this interpretation 
of the Bible upon all mankind ? Who gave the right 
to Athanasius to pronounce as an oecumenical con- 
fession of faith the Quicunque vult salvus esse, i. e. 
"No one can be saved except he believe as is here 
prescribed." Living the truth can save alone. But 
the truth cannot be pronounced on the motion of a 
bishop by the majority decision of an ecclesiastic 
council. The truth must be searched for, it must be 
established by careful observation and critique, it 
must be proved. 

We are willing to recognise the truth wherever 
we find it, even in the errors of the past ; we will pa- 
tiently winnow all opinions and creeds, lest we throw 
away the wheat together with the useless chaff. But 
with all that, we do not intend to compromise with 
superstitions sanctified by traditions. If Athanasius's 
view of God and other religious conceptions are to be 
regarded as infallible truth too sacred for criticism and 
required to be accepted blindly, we shall openly and 
squarely side with atheism and denounce the belief in 
God as a superstition. 

Atheism is right in the face of dogma and dog- 
matic theism. There is no person ruling the world ; 
all the processes of nature take place with an intrinsic 
necessity according to the life that is in everything 
that exists. The whole world is one great cosmos 
pervaded by unalterable law. 

But was the idea of God not something more than 
a belief in a huge person ? Is it possible that an 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 93 

enormous error swayed the intellectual development 
of humanity for millenniums? The strength of the 
God idea was not its error but its truth, and its truth 
is contained in the fact, that in spite of the advantages 
which sin, malevolence, iniquity, falsehood, and disre- 
gard of the rights of others seem to bring the evil-doer, 
humanity still believed in the final victory of justice 
and the triumph of truth. And this one feature in 
the idea of God was predominant whenever and wher- 
ever it exercised a moral influence over the minds of 
men. It gave them strength in temptation, hope in 
affliction, and confidence in tribulation. And shall we 
relinquish this treasure because it was alloyed with 
error? Shall we drop with the personality of God all 
the moral truth which the idea contains ? 
Schiller says : 

" One God exists, one holy will, 
While fickle man may waver. 
Above time and space there liveth still 
The highest idea forever." 

If, then, God is no person, if God is consid- 
ered as the All in All, if Nature alone is God, is not 
the latter view nearer the truth than theism ? This 
view which identifies God and the world is called 
Pantheism, and it cannot be denied that in the face 
of the tl^eistic view, pantheism is a deeper and more 
correct conception of God. Nevertheless, Pantheism 
has also its blind side, and most of its defenders are 
entangled in gross errors. 

It is true that the idea of a personal God outside of 
the world and nature is not tenable ; yet the idea of 
God and the idea of nature are not identical. God is 
nature in so far only as nature serves us as a regulative 
principle for our actions. God is the cosmos in so far 
only as its laws represent the ultimate authority of 



94 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 



moral conduct. God is not the heat of the sun, not 
the rain that descends from the clouds; he is not the 
blossom of the tree, nor the ear of wheat in the field. 
The idea of God is a special abstraction, different from 
other abstractions, and it should not be confounded 
with them. Pantheism recognising the truth that there 
is no God outside of the universe, preposterously con- 
founds God and the universe and thus leads to the 
confusion of a God-Nature, in which there is no wrong, 
no sin, no evil. 

It has been said, and it is true, that the weakness 
of Pantheism is its inabilit}^ to explain the evil of the 
world. If the All is in every respect absolutely iden- 
tical with God, there is no evil : if everything is a part 
of God, its existence whatever it be, even the exist- 
ence of evil, is sanctified by being divine. There 
would be no wrong, but there would be no right either. 
The morally bad would disappear together with that 
which is morally good, and the whole would appear as 
an absolutely indifferent and meaningless play of phys- 
ical forces. 

Does this state of things really represent life as it 
is ? Are there no ideals, no aspirations ? Is there no 
direction, no goal, no aim in the evolution of life and 
in the development of mankind? Surely there is 
good and bad, there is right and wrong, there is health 
and sickness, there is prosperity and ruin, evolution 
and dissolution, building up and breaking down ; there 
is heaven and hell in human hearts, there is God — and 
the devil. The world as it is is possible only in these 
contraries, in these oppositions, and its life is a con- 
stant struggle between Ormuzd and Ahriman. 

It is a vain dream to think of a world which is good 
throughout. We can as little think of light that casts 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 95 

no shadow as of ''good" without being the resistance 
to ''evil/' or without standing in a contrast to "bad." 
Christ said : 

"Woe unto the world because of ofifences ! For it must needs 
be that offences come ; but woe to that man by whom the offence 
Cometh." 

The Talmud contains a legend that the rabbis had 
once succeeded in catching the devil and keeping him 
confined, when lo ! the whole world came to a stand- 
still. Everybody went to sleep and all life ceased. 
Suppose it were possible that a world existed without 
any evil, it would be a world without any opposites, 
it would be a world of indifferent homogeneity, with- 
out aim, without direction, without interests. If there 
were at all in an absolutely good world a play of forces 
evolution would be as good as dissolution, progress 
would be equivalent to retrogression, and the cosmos 
would be a machine which might be turned backward 
just as well as forward. 

Could you have a thermometer which indicates the 
heat only and not the cold at the same time? Good 
and evil are relations which are deeply founded in the 
nature of things. These relations arise through the 
very complications of life. To identify God and the 
All, to understand by God the upward direction just 
as much as the downward direction of evolution, is the 
same mistake as to identify the concepts heat and tem- 
perature. It is true that the same degree of the ther- 
mometer may now be perceived as heat and now as 
cold. Heat and cold are not two things mixed in our 
temperature ; they are one. So are good and evil. 
Nevertheless there is a difference in the rising and the 
falling of the thermometer. There is a difference of 
heat and cold. This difference is relative and it dis- 



g6 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

appears as soon as we leave the sphere of relations 
and consider either a single moment in its unrelated 
isolation or the total whole in its absolute entirety. A 
single act in my life if it remained unrelated and iso- 
lated could be called neither good nor evil. There is 
no absolute evil ; nor is there any absolute cold. An 
isolated act would be like a certain position of the 
thermometer of which we do not know whether it rep- 
resents a rise or a fall. It becomes hot or cold not 
until it is referred to another state of temperature. 
And there is no sense either in speaking of the morality 
or immorality of the All in its absolute totality. 

That which appears to us from our standpoint as evil 
— and I do not deny that, considered in this relation, it 
is actually and undeniably evil — appears if considered 
in the whole as a part of the total development of uni 
versal life, as a transitional and a necessary phase 
only. It is a partial breakdown, but it is no absolute 
destruction. 

The evil in the world is comparable to the negative 
magnitudes and quantities in arithmetic. There are 
no negative things in the world ; but there are nega- 
tive magnitudes in arithmetic. They represent a con- 
trary direction to that which has been posited. The 
minus is a positive operation, but thi:5 operation is 
employed to reverse a plus of equal magnitude. The 
plus and minus operations have sense and meaning 
only if considered in their mutual relation. This re- 
lation being neglected we have only single operations 
or the results of operations, but neither positive nor 
negative magnitudes. If the impossibility could be 
thought, that there are no interconnections among the 
parts of the whole cosmos, we should have neither 
bad nor good, but only isolated actual existences. 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. gy 

• Consider the whole world as a whole and destruc- 
tion disappears as much as new creations. There are, 
so far as we can see, only actual existences which 
move onward somehow in some direction. That which 
appears to us as a dissolution, as a destruction, is in the 
motion of the whole a mers preparation for a new gen- 
eration. The breakdown of a solar system must appear 
only as an evil, as a negative operation in comparison 
to the positive operation of a building up. But in the 
entire cosmic life it will most likely be the indispen- 
sable preliminary phase of the construction of a new 
world. In the entire cosmic life, there is no evil, there 
is the progress of formation on the one hand and there 
is on the other hand the dissolution of those combina- 
tions which have become unfit for a continued exist- 
ence. They must be dissolved in order to be prepared 
for new formations; and thus their dissolution may 
be considered as a blessing, as much as the curses 
that rest upon sin, if viewed as integral parts of the 
whole world-order, are not inflictions; they are as much 
blessings as the gains that accompany noble deeds. 

In this sense we may say that God is everywhere 
in nature, he is in evolution, he is in dissolution, he 
will be found in the storm; he will be found in the 
calm. He lives in the bliss of good aspirations and in 
the visitations that follow evil actions. He lives in 
the growth of life and in its decay. God is not the 
storm, he is not the calm, he is not the deca}^ of life, 
he is not dissolution. He is not the bliss of virtue, 
nor is he the curse of sin. But he is in them all. 

In contradistinction to Theism, Atheism, and espe- 
cially to Pantheism, we call this conception of God 
Entheism. 

God is the indestructible sursum, which ensouls 



g8 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

everything that exists, which constitutes the direction 
of evolution and the growth of life, which is the truth 
in the empire of spiritual existence. It is an actu- 
ality, no less than matter and energy ; and indeed 
hke these two, which represent as it were God's re- 
ality as well as his power and omnipotence, it cannot 
be lost in all the changes that take place in the con- 
stant formation^ dissolution, and re-formation of solar 
systems. It is eternal, and it is in him we live and 
and move and have our being. 



IS GOD A MIND? 



We read in the first chapter of Genesis : 

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our 
likeness : and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, 
and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the 
earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God 
created he him." 

These verses are significant. They have a scien- 
tific meaning. To us God is that power to which we 
have to conform ; he has produced man such as he is, 
that is as the thinking being that aspires to ever higher 
and nobler ideals, to us accordingly the view that man 
is created in the image of God becomes self-evident 
and almost tautological. But primitive thinkers start- 
ing from the supposition that man is a likeness of God 
were led to the strange error that God in his turn must 
be a likeness of man. Thus arose all the anthropo- 
morphic conceptions of God. 

That power which produced man — let us at present 
call it ''nature" so as to avoid the old confusion of 
anthropomorphism — cannot have been matter and 
nothing but matter, it cannot have been force or energy 
and nothing but force, it cannot have been sentiency 
or the conditions of sentiency, and nothing but poten- 
tial sentiency. Nor can it have been form or a forma- 



loo HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

tive principle alone. It cannot have been law and or- 
der only. It must have been all this together. Matter, 
force, sentiency, form, law, and order are only aspects 
of nature, they are only abstract ideas representing 
some qualities of reality, which alone is the One and 
All. And this One and All is not a meaningless chaos, 
as it represents itself in minds that are confounded, 
but an orderly and living whole bringing forth out of 
itself sentient beings in whom its existence is mirrored. 
Existence mirrored in minds is not a mere Fata Mor- 
gana, a beautiful mirage, but it serves the practical 
purpose of guidance, to let the children of nature live 
in accord with its great mother, to show them the way 
of salvation, the gate that leadeth unto life. 

When we speak of nature we think as a rule of 
certain single phenomena only of this One and All ; we 
think of mountains and trees but not so much of man's 
mind and his interferences with the rest of nature — 
for properly considered man's mind is a part of nature. 
When we speak of reality, we think above all of its actu- 
ality, its efficacy, its immediate presence, but when we 
speak of God, we think of it as an authoritative existence, 
as our standard of ethics, as the moral law, allegor- 
ically represented as our Father, that is, as the power 
that created us and guides us still, to which we have 
to conform in our ethical aspirations. Nature, Real- 
ity, God, or whatever other expression we may have 
for the One and All of the great Cosmos in its infinite 
manifestations and in its eternal being, are all names 
only, abstract ideas representing now this and now 
that quality of one and the same existence. 

Sentient creatures, the children of God, in so far 
as they are psychical are called minds. And we ask, 
What do we understand by minds ? 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. lOi 

A mind, in brief, is a description of the world in 
ideas. ^' Ideas" means literally '' images." The dif- 
ferent things are represented, and the interaction 
among these representations is called thinking. 

How ideas originate is a question the solution of 
which can only be hinted at in this connection. Mind 
can originate only in feeling beings. The feelings of 
feeling beings are different according to the different 
sense-impressions through and with which they make 
their appearance, similar sense-impressions being as- 
sociated with similar feelings. Thus feelings acquire 
meaning. The various causes of the different sense-im- 
pressions are symbolised in various feelings as well as 
in the memory pictures of these various feelings. Ideas 
again are symbols representing whole groups of such 
feelings as are somehow constantly associated. And 
the glorious evolution of the realm of ideas in living 
beings is easily explained if we consider its usefulness 
as a means of information concerning the surrounding 
world. They afford the possibility of orientation and 
serve as a guidance for action. With the assistance 
of representative images plans of action become pos- 
sible, and a conception of a better arrangement of this 
or that state of things — generally called an ideal — is 
of the highest importance to the further development 
of life and mind. A growth of mind leads to an in- 
crease of power. Each acquirement of truth means 
an expanse of the dominion of mind in nature. 

Minds naturally grow by degrees ; they start with 
simple feelings in irritable substance, and in the long 
run of millenniums through a preservation of soul- 
structures (generally called hereditary transmission) 
and, in the higher grades of life, through a direct 
transference of mind by means of education they gather 



102 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

a rich store of soul-structures, of pictures representing 
innumerable objects as well as the subtle relations 
among these objects. 

Let us now ask whether God can be a mind. 
Our answer is decidedly negative. Every mind is a 
world of representations, of pictures, of ideas ; and 
these ideas, pictures, and representations have a mean- 
ing. If they are true they represent realities. Now 
if there is a God, and we say that there is, God is not 
ideality but reality ; he is not a mental representation 
of the actual world, of nature, of the Universe, of the 
Cosmos ; he is much more than a mere representa- 
tion, he is the actual world, nature, the Universe, the 
Cosmos itself. He is the One and All, not a part of 
it, or a mere picture of it. God is also the picture, 
and he is that quality of the world which makes the 
picturing in minds possible. God is in the mind, he 
reveals himself in the human soul ; he appears in 
Truth. But God is not only the truth ; he is infinitely 
more than the truth, he is the reality represented in 
the truth. 

Truth is truth because it is an image shaped unto 
the likeness of the original. The human mind is 
created as an image of God. Now the theologian 
comes and says, Man is like God, man is mind — i. e., 
a world of images or ideas — therefore God must be a 
mind. Is this not like saying, This is a picture of 
George Washington, it is like George Washington. 
Therefore George Washington is a picture ! No ! 
George Washington is more than a picture ; he is the 
original of the picture ! 

It is often said that man is a finite mind and God 
is an infinite mind. But what has either infinitude or 
finiteness to do with mind ? Mind, every mind, is in- 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 103 

finite in its possibilities, there is no limit to its growth, 
there is no boundary which it cannot reach and tran- 
scend. But at any special state, as at present or at 
any moment in the future, mind is and always will be 
something definite. Consider that all mental repre- 
sentations are possible only through limitation. Thus 
vision is possible only through focusing the eyes upon 
one spot. Comprehension in mental pictures, is a 
focusing of the mind's attention upon one thing or one 
feature of things. Accordingly minds in this sense are 
always finite, always limited. Every mind is always 
the mind of a concrete being and the contents of every 
mind are also of a concrete kind. Think of infinite 
pictures, or infinite ideas ! What a meaningless com- 
bination of words ! If God, the One and All, is infinite 
indeed, he certainly cannot be a mind. 

We might and some people indeed do understand 
by mind the nature of mind, mentality. The nature 
of mind may be found in sentiency or in that quality 
of nature which produces sentiency— -we call it poten- 
tial sentiency. Or it may be found in the order pre- 
vailing among the mental representations, which order 
is representative of the objective world-order, of the 
cosmic law and the rationality of the universe as rep- 
resented in cosmic laws. Very well. If '^ mind" means 
the nature of mind, then certainly God is mind, but 
he is not a mind. 

If God were a mind, it were necessary for him to 
have ideas. Otherwise his mind would represent 
without representations and symbolise without sym- 
bols. He would have to think his ideas consecutively 
as we do and form different associations at a time. 
Yet, what would mental representations avail him ? 
He need not think, he need not speak to himself 



I04 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

in order to make up his mind to act in this or that 
way. He simply acts. He in his all-sufficiency is al- 
ways himself and thus he is consistent with himself. 

In the catechism this truth is mythologically ex- 
pressed in the idea of omniscience. Nature, as it were, 
obeys the law everywhere. The falling stone falls as 
if it knew the law of gravitation and had correctly 
computed the present case. Nature need not know 
the law in order to obey it. She need not employ the 
symbols of mental representation to remain consistent 
with herself. She is herself everywhere, and the laws 
of nature are a part and feature of nature. We say. 
Nature is as it were omniscient. Actually nature is 
more than omniscient. As omniscient, she might com- 
municate information about all things of herself to her- 
self. This communication, however, is so direct, she 
being herself everywhere, that its means, i. e. the sym- 
bols, which are the crutches of communication, dis- 
appear into zero. The communication is received 
before it is pronounced. 

That God should be the One and All, and at the 
same time a mind, would be something like saying, 
that a man in order to be a man and himself, should 
always have his passport or his picture in his pocket. 
No ! If we speak of the man, we mean the man and 
not his picture. If we speak of God, we mean the 
All-Being and not a mind, we mean the original and 
not the copy, we mean the creator and not the creature. 

Is it Atheism to deny that God is a mind? If you 
understand by God that he is a person like ourselves, 
it certainly is Atheism. But if the conception of God 
as a mind and a person were the only allowable God- 
idea, then theism would be paganism. What is pagan- 
ism but the personification of parts of nature or nature 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 105 

as a whole and the acting accordingly. Pagans try to 
bend the course of nature and natural laws not by their 
own efforts and honest work, but by prayers and sacri- 
fices — as if God or the Gods were human beings like 
ourselves influenced by flatteries "and bribable by gifts ! 
Christ has done away with the vain repetitions as do 
the heathens, but the Christians still cling to Pagan 
customs, pagan rites and a pagan conception of God. 

People who have given little thought to the sub- 
ject might think, that if God is not a mind, it is as 
good as if he did not exist. Then he would only be 
brute force and crude matter. But this is a mistaken 
conception of God. The materialist runs to the other 
extreme. God is not mere force and God is not crude 
matter. How grand and divine this wonderful All- 
Being is, can only be learned from its manifestations. 
The heavens declare the glory of God and the firma- 
ment showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth 
speech and night unto night showeth knowledge. 
There is no speech nor language where their voice is 
not heard. Yet grander than all the starry heavens 
in their glorious concert is the soul of man, the mind 
that yearns for truth, the spirit that understands, and 
aspires to achieve, the work of truth. 

The All, the Cosmos, God, or by whatever name 
we may call the great whole of which we are parts and 
phenomena, is not a heap of material atoms nor a 
chaos of blind forces. The most characteristic feature 
of his being is order and law. And this order and law 
is called in the New Testament Logos — i. e. rationality, 
reason, logical consistency. God would be no God 
without the logos. This Logos is a constitutional part 
of God. God is not a mind, but he is mind, he is 
logos, and he appears in mind. God is not truth, but 



io6 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

he appears in truth. This is the revelation which 
Christianity has brought into the world. 

Says St. John: ''In the beginning, [that means 
from eternity] was the Logos and the Logos was with 
God and the Logos Was God. All things were made 
by him and without him was not anything made that 
was made. . . . And the Logos was made flesh." 

This last sentence is the kernel of Christianity. 
The divinity of the world appears in humanity, and 
and true humanity embodies all that which we call 
divine. The son of man is the child of God and the 
ideal of humanity is the God man. God is not a mind, 
but nevertheless God is mind, and when we come to 
ask, where is the Father, Christ answers very posi- 
tively and unmistakably ''I and the Father are one." 

Those who believe in God as being a mind are 
more pagan than they are aware of. It may be said 
that God is mind, but not a m.ind. Suppose he were 
a mind, is that not actually polytheism only with the 
number of Gods reduced to the singular? Christ does 
not say, God is a spirit, but ''God is spirit." Yet the 
pagan conception of God has been so influential that 
the translator has inserted that little word which 
changes a most radical, a philosophical and a monistic 
idea into the very same superstitions against which 
Christ had protested so vigorously. 

Science is not dangerous to religion, and clear 
thought is not against the teachmgs of Christ. Science 
is dangerous to superstitions and clear thought is in- 
compatible with many dogmas and conceptions which 
are upheld at present by the Christian churches. The 
dogmatist rightly shuns the light of science, but the 
religious man, that is, he who wants truth unadulter- 
ated and is ready to conform to truth, to live it and to 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 167 

act according to his best knowledge of truth, he will 
not lose his religion but purify it through thought and 
scientitic exactness of thought. 
Says Lord Bacon : 

"A little philosophy inclineth Man's mind to atheism, but 
depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." 

Bacon's view of God is not clear and thus this fa- 
mous saying of his also lacks lucidity. We understand 
it and quote it in the sense, that a little philosophy is 
sufficient to make apparent the contradictions and ab- 
surdities contamed in the traditional idea of God. 
But a deeper insight will reveal the profound truth 
that is contained therein. Depth in philosophy will 
help us to purify the fundamental conceptions of re- 
ligious thought, above all the idea of God. When we 
maintain that God is not a mind, we do not deny that 
he is mind, taking mind in the sense of the Greek 
*^logos"; and at any rate he is greater than the 
greatest human or other mind can be, for he is the re- 
ality itself of which a mind is only an image, a sym- 
bol, and a representation. 



IS THE INFINITE A RELIGIOUS IDEA? 



Prof. Max Mueller's view of religion is based on 
the conception of the infinite. His idea of God is the 
infinite behind the finite. He says : 

"Convince the human understanding that there can be acts 
without agents, that there can be a limit without something be- 
yond, that there can be a finite without a non-finite, and you have 
proved that there is no God." 

Is this not going rather too far ? Does the agent 
supposed to be behind the processes of nature con- 
stitute nature's divinity? Prof. Max Miiller's view 
of God is scientific as well as radical, but it makes of 
religion a metaphysical speculation ; it identifies it 
with the conception of an hypothetic something be- 
hind nature of which we really know nothing. It ap- 
pears very desirable to free religion from this metaphys- 
ical element and build it upon the positive facts of our 
experience which will always remain its safest founda- 
tion. 

Positivism knows of no agent behind the natural 
phenomena ; it dispenses also with the agent behind 
the psychical processes of soul-life. Positivism is an 
economy of thought. Instead of viewing acts as mo- 
tions produced by the pressure of an agent behind 
them, we think the act and agent together as one. The 
agent is in, not behind the act. The act is the agent 
itself. 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 109 

Positivism is commonly represented as atheism just 
as much as the view of the orthodox Oxford Professor 
would have been decried as atheism some ten or 
twenty years ago. And I grant that Positivism is not 
Theism, if Theism means the belief in a personal God 
who being shaped into the image of man, is conceived 
as an individual being, as a great world-ego swayed 
by considerations and even by passions and emotions, 
thinking now of this now of that thought, and regulat- 
ing the affairs of the universe as it pleases him like a 
powerful monarch. 

There is nothing more or less divine in the infinite 
than in any other mathematical, logical, or scientific 
idea. The infinite has one advantage only — if it be 
an advantage — over other ideas ; its nature is less 
understood. But if there were anything divine in 
the conception of the infinite, why do we not use such 
formulas a ^ or tangent 90 degrees, or simply the sign 

00 as holy emblems in our churches? 

Prof. Max Miiller must have felt this insufficiency 
of the idea of infinitude as the basis of religion. At 
least he has on another occasion modified his defini- 
tion. In another article of his,* Prof. Max Miiller 
says : 

" It may be said in fact it has been said, that the definition 
of religion which I laid down is too narrow and too arbitrary. . . . 

1 thought it right to modify my first definition of religion as ' the 
perception of the Infinite,' by narrowing that perception to ' such 
manifestations as are able to influence the moral character of man. 
I do not deny that in the beginning the perception of the Infinite 
had often very little to do with moral ideas, and I am quite aware 
that many religions enjoin what is either not moral or even im- 
moral. But though there are perceptions of the Infinite uncon- 

* Fire- Worship and Mythology iji their Relation to Religion, ( The Open 
Court, page 2322, No, 146, Vol. IV.— 16). 



no HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

nected as yet with moral ideas, I doubt whether they should be 
called religious till they assume a moral influence. On this point 
there may be difference of opinion, but every one may claim the 
right of his own opinion." 

The infinite, it appears to me, is not at all a spe- 
cially religious idea, and it will be very difficult to 
prove how the idea of the infinite can ever assume a 
moral influence, except in a very limited sphere. The 
powers of nature in their overwhelming influence upon 
the fate of man in a beneficent and evil way, the light 
of the sun, the flashes of the thunderstorm, the joy of 
great triumphs, the enthusiasm after extraordinary 
successes, our trials and sorrow at the bedside of 
our beloved ones, the agonies and anxieties of life, in 
one word definite and actual realities have done 
much more than the idea of the infinite in the produc- 
tion of religion. I am aware that Prof. Max Miiller 
says : '' These finite realities suggest an infinite agent 
beyond them. " But this is no description of religion ; it 
is an interpretation of religious ideas, representing 
them in a special phase of development. 

The infinite may have produced a religious awe in 
a lonely scholar when he pondered over the problems 
of its nature and found himself unable to solve them. 
And it may have stirred a still deeper religious emo- 
tion in the mathematical mind who succeeded in solv- 
ing some of its problems. But the same religious in- 
fluence must be attributed to any other scientific idea. 
Was not Kepler overwhelmed with the grandeur of 
the cosmos when he solved the riddle of the mo- 
tions of the heavenly bodies? Was not his emotion 
truly religious, and is there anything infinite in his 
formulas? 

It will be noticeable that the infinite as a properly 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. m 

religious idea enjoys a very limited field. The two 
greatest religious documents are to my mind the Deca- 
logue representing the Old Testament and the Lord's 
Prayer representing the New Testament ; in neither 
can any idea of the infinite be found. It is true that 
the Lord's prayer ends with the clause '^for thine is 
the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever, 
Amen." '^ Forever" I grant, means infinite time. But 
it is well known that these words are not genuine with 
Christ ; they have been added by the Christians of the 
first or second century ; and if they were genuine, how 
incidental is the idea of the infinite, how secondary if 
compared with the momentous propositions of the 
prayer itself ! It appears that religion would not suffer 
if the idea of the infinite were entirely dropped from 
its definition and Prof. Max. Miiller's additional clause 
(i. e. '' that which will influence the moral character of 
man") were made its main essence. 

The definition of God as the infinite conveys no clear 
idea. The popular view of the infinite is very indefi- 
nite, and its scientific conception is a thought-symbol 
for a process never to be finished. The scientific 
view of the infinite does not represent a complete and 
real thing, but an incomplete and never to be com- 
pleted function. Suppose that in measuring the world 
we arrived at the last star of the farthest milky way 
and took our stand between the definite reality behind, 
and empty space before us, is there no divinity in the 
finite existences we have measured, and is God living 
in the nothingness of the infinite space that lies be- 
yond us unmeasured and immeasurable? 

Let us define God as those realities of our expe- 
rience to which we have to comform ; as those mani- 
festations of nature which we cannot fashion; as those 



112 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

laws of cosmic existence which we have to obey; and 
atheism will never again rise to overthrow the proofs 
of an existence of God. God is the authority of moral 
conduct, and religion is the basis of morality. All ideas 
which influence the moral character of man are re- 
ligious, while dogmas are either religiously indifferent, 
as if they represent ideas having no bearing upon 
moral conduct, or even deeply irreligious, if they are 
productive of immoral habits. And one of the most 
immoral church doctrines, not as yet entirely aban- 
doned by orthodox people, is that man should believe 
blindly. It is a sacred religious duty to investigate 
the truth most scrupulously. Religion is not belief in 
the supernatural as the theologian of the old school 
says, nor is it the search for the infinite, as Prof. Max 
Miiller says. Religion is much simpler. It is our search 
for truth with the aspiration to regulate our conduct 
in accord with truth.* 

*Prof. F. Max Miiller wrote to the author with reference to the above 
criticism of the Infinite as a religious idea: " I thank you for your article on 
my fourth Lecture. I quite agree with your objections, and when you see the 
whole of the lectures, you will find how carefully I guarded against this mis- 
apprehension. The Infinite is simply the highest generalisation for all that 
ever formed the object of religion. There is no wider term, it is wider even 
than Spencer's Unknowable, as I tried to show. But here as elsewhere we 
want a katharsis of language, otherwise we shall never have a new phi- 
losophy. F. Max Mueller." 



GOD, FREEDOM, AND IMMORTALITY. 



Kant showed in his Critique of Pure Reason that 
the ideas Soul, World, and God are ' paralogisms of pure 
reason.' We can arrive at these concepts by a logical 
fallacy only. We ma}^ nevertheless, he declared in his 
Critique of Practical Reason, retain these concepts, 
because they are of greatest importance for our prac- 
tical and our moral life. If we act as if we had no 
soul, and as if no God existed, we are more likely to 
go astray than if we act as if we had an immortal soul 
and as if a God existed — a God, a just and omnipo- 
tent judge, who will reward the good and punish the 
evil. 

Upon the need of morality he builds an ideal world, 
the foundations of which are the ideas of Freedom (in- 
cluding moral responsibility), Immortality, and God. 
Being fully conscious of the fact, that these ideas are 
not provable, Kant called them '' the three postulates 
of practical reason." 

The conflict between Pure Reason and Practical 
Reason proves that in Kant's philosophy traces of Du- 
alism are preserved which lead him to incompatible 
assertions. He boldly and honestly lays down the in- 
consistency of his philosophy in his four ''antinomies," 
or contradictory statements. Popularly expressed, they 
are: 



114 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE, 



THESIS. 

1. The world is lim- 
ited. 

2. The soul is a sim- 
ple substance, and there- 
fore immortal. 

3. There is moral free- 
dom distinct from the law 
of causality. 

4. There is a God. 



ANTITHESIS. 

1 . The world is infinite. 

2. The soul is a com- 
pound, and therefore de- 
structible. 

3. There is no freedom, 
but all is subject to cau- 
sality. 

4. There is no God. 
Kant believes that the arguments to either issue, 

the positive or the negative, are of equal weight. 
Thesis as well as Antithesis, he declares, can be de- 
fended or attacked with equal force. 

Is it not strange that a great man can fall into so 
great an error — an error that is at the same time so 
palpable ? Of two statements that are contradictory, 
one only can be true. It is impossible that both are 
right, or that the arguments of either are correct. Yet 
it is possible that both are wrong, that the formula- 
tion of the dilemma is radically incorrect, — and is such 
the case with Kant's antinomies. 

We resolve the four antinomies into the following 
statements, which cannot be said to be contradictory. 

1. Space (which is no object, no palpable thing, but 
merely the possibility of motion in every direction) is 
infinite. Yet the world, although immeasurable to us 
consists of a definite amount of matter and energy 
which can neither increase nor decrease. 

2. The soul is a compound of highest complexity 
and is therefore destructible; but being a compound of a 
special form, it can be broken and built again. When 
built again, it can be improved. Souls of a special 
kind can be formed, and ever nobler ideas can be im- 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 115 

planted into souls. Thus the soul — a special compound 
of living thoughts, living in the organized brain-sub- 
stance of bodily beings as real nerve-structures — can 
continue to exist even beyond the death of the single 
individual ; it can be propagated, transplanted, and 
evolved. And to accomplish this is the main object 
of human institutions. There is no immortality of the 
ego beyond the clouds, but there is a continuance of 
soul-life in this world. The continuance and higher 
development of soul-life is of vital importance, and the 
duties of our present lives must be performed, not to 
please or benefit ourselves but in a spirit such as to 
enhance the life of the race to come. We must live 
so that our soul shall continue to live and to evolve in 
future generations. 

3. Freedom and necessity are not incompatible;* 
but freedom and compulsion are contradictions. If a 
man is compelled by the authorities of the law to observe 
the law he cannot be said to be free. But if the law — 
the good will to live according to the law and the 
honest intention to act with righteousness — is a part 
of the man and a feature of his character, he is free 
while observing the law. The actions of a m^oral man 
are necessarily moral ; they are the necessary outcome 
of his free will. 

4. The anthropomorphic idea of God as a transcend- 
ent personality is undoubtedly a paralogism of pure rea- 
son; but the conception of an immanent God as the 
cosmical law to which we have to conform in order to 
live and to continue to live in future generations is no 
paralogism, no logical fallacy. Such a conception of 
God is at variance neither with reason nor experience^ 
and there is no atheist who could not be converted to 

♦Seethe writer's "Fundamental Problems," pp. 191-196. 



ii6 . HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

it by rational argument and by a study of nature. This 
God is not the personified weakness of a benevolent 
father — the ideal of the deists who would fain make 
him as sentimental and feeble as they were them- 
selves. This God is the stern severity of order and 
law — irrefragable and immutable as are all natural 
laws, and yet at the same time as reliable and as grand, 
as sure and eternal — visiting the iniquity of the fathers 
upon the children unto the third and fourth genera- 
tion, and showing mercy unto the thousands of those 
that keep his commandments. 

We thus have the three postulates of Kant again, 
although in another shape. We have no transcenden- 
tal God, no illusory ghost-immortality, no freedom that 
stands in contradiction to the law of causation. But 
we have the immanent God of a moral law in nature; 
we have the immanent immortality of a continuance 
of our soul-life beyond death and the moral freedom 
of responsibility for our actions. The errors that were 
attached to these ideas are done away VN^ith, but their 
ethical value remains unimpaired. They have ceased 
to be postulates and have become truths — for now 
they are no longer paralogisms, they are free from 
contradictions ; they are real, because they represent 
certain facts of reality which can be verified by expe- 
rience. 



PROMETHEUS AND THE FATE OF ZEUS. 



The Greeks possessed an old myth which in phil- 
osophical depth somewhat resembles the Teutonic 
Faust. The story of Prometheus is told in different 
versions by Hesiod in his ''Theogony" (511 et seqq.) 
and in his ''Works and Days" C/\.8 et seqq.). Aeschy- 
lus, the first of the three great Athenian dramatists, 
gave in his great trilogy of the Fire-bringer Prome- 
theus, the Bound Prometheus, and the Liberated 
Prometheus a third and undoubtedly the best, the 
most philosophical, and the profoundest version of the 
legend. And since these three great dramas exist only 
in fragments which bear witness to the grandeur of 
the Greek poet's thought, this greatest of all ideas, 
that of aspiring and conquering man — conquering 
through forethought — still awaits a great poet to give 
it a modern form. As Goethe created the final con- 
ception of the Faust-myth, so the poet of the future, 
perhaps still unborn, will let us have the final concep- 
tion of the Prometheus legend. 

Prometheus is the son of Themis, and Themis is the 
Goddess of law. Prometheus with the help of the 
eternal laws of existence has acquired the faculty of 
forethought. Prometheus means the man who thinks 
in advance. 



ii8 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

Prometheus had a brother and his name was Epi- 
metheus, that is the man who thinks afterwards, when 
it is too late. There is a story about an old Gotham 
magistrate who had very wise thoughts, but they did 
not come to him until the session was over and all the 
foolish motions of the fathers of the town had passed. 
His best thoughts came when he walked down stairs 
in the city hall. This same kind of wisdom, the wis- 
dom of the staircase, was the wisdom of Epimetheus, 
and thus the two brothers were very unlike each 
other. 

In those days Zeus kept the fire for himself; he 
allowed the sun to shine upon the earth and when he 
grew angry he threw down his thunderbolts upon oaks 
and mountain-tops. But he was envious and feared 
that man might become too powerful. Prometheus 
foresaw the great advantages which the usage of fire 
would have for mankind. So he stole the fire from the 
heavens and brought it to the people on earth, teaching 
them how to build a hearth and to use it wisely. But 
Zeus punished Prometheus severely for his theft, he 
chained him to a rock and had an eagle swoop down 
upon him daily to devour his liver which always grew 
again during the night. Prometheus was afterwards 
liberated by the skill and courage of another daring 
man — by Hercules who shot the eagle and rescued the 
sufferer. 

Why did Zeus not kill Prometheus ? First we are 
told that Prometheus was immortal. But there is 
another reason still. Prometheus knew a secret which 
Zeus did not foresee, although it foreboded evil to the 
father of the gods. This secret, as we can surmise 
for several reasons, consisted according to the old 
mythological tradition in this: Zeus loved a goddess; 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. lig 

her name was Thetis, and it was written in the books 
of fate that the son of Thetis should be greater, in- 
finitely greater, than his father. According to the 
version of Aeschylus, Zeus became reconciled with 
Prometheus on the condition that he should reveal 
the fatal secret to him so that he might protect him- 
self against the imminent evil. And we are told that 
Zeus resigned his love and ordered Thetis to be 
married to a mortal man whose name was Peleus, and 
the son of Peleus was the greatest hero of Greek an- 
tiquity, the noble, the brave, the proud Achilles. 

This is the version of Aeschylus, but there is an- 
other version still left. That is the version of the poet 
of the future. Aeschylus believes that Zeus was saved. 
Zeus being reconciled with Prometheus knev/ of the 
danger and evaded it. Yet we now know, that he 
could not evade it. Let a god have a son and the son 
will be greater than the god, even though the son of 
God may call himself the son of man. Says Goethe : 
''The son shall be greater than the father," — that is 
the law of evolution, the law of life, the law of pro- 
gress. We now know that Zeus was actually de- 
throned by a greater God than himself and this greater 
God was the son of man — the aspiring, the suffering, 
the conquering son of man. 

Zeus is dead, but Prometheus is still living. Who 
is Zeus and where is Zeus ? Zeus is the phantom-god 
of pagan antiquity. Zeus is a personification of the 
Divine in nature, he is a grand picture of God, but he 
is not God himself. If we expect that the picture we 
have made of God is God himself, if we imagine him 
to be a mind like ourselves, we shall fall into the same 
errors and pass through the same disappointments as 
did Prometheus. Says Goethe's Prometheus : 



I20 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

" While yet a child 
And ignorant of life, 
I turned my wandering gaze 
Up toward the sun, as if above 
There were an ear to hear my waitings 
A heart like mine 
To feel compassion for distress." 

It was most likely necessary that Prometheus should 
pass through his errors to arrive at truth, it was indis- 
pensable to brave the evils of life and to undergo 
severe sufferings in order to conquer. The errors as 
well as the sufferings, the very evils of life are good in 
so far as they help man to struggle and to progress. 
But in order to gain the victory, Prometheus ought to 
know that he must fight himself ; he cannot rely upon 
the help of his phantom-god — of a Zeus above the 
clouds. The real God of nature is deaf to the prayers 
of those who pray in the hope that he will do the work 
for them. 

There is more divinity in Prometheus than in Zeus. 
The God of the present time is the son of man and his 
symbol is the cross, which means that the way of suf- 
fering is the way of salvation, struggle is the condition 
of victory, the path of toil only is the road to a higher 
existence, the narrow gate leadeth unto life. The 
Zeus-idea of God is doomed and an infinitely greater, 
because truer, ide^a of God is dawning upon mankind. 
There is truth in mythology and there is a meaning in 
parables, yet the parable is told for the sake of its 
meaning and the truth is greater than mythology. Let 
us not be satisfied with mythology, but let us look out 
tor the truth. 



ENTER INTO NIRVANA. 



THE RELIGION OF A FORERUNNER OF CHRIST. 



The religion of Buddha hinges upon the two ideas 
Sansara and Nirvana. 

Sansara is the bustle of the world ; it is full not 
only of vanity, but also of pain and misery ; it consists 
of the many little trivialities that make up life. It is 
the pursuit of happiness ; it is hunting for a shadow 
which the more eagerly it is pursued the quicker it 
flies. 

The worldhng lives in Sansara. He imagines he 
proceeds onward in a straight line, yet he moves in a 
narrow circle without being aware of it. He hastens 
from desire to pleasure, from pleasure to satiety and 
thence back to desire. 

The worldling eagerly tastes the pleasure, and if 
he can he tastes it to the last, he intoxicates himself 
with it, only to find out that it was not what he had 
hoped for. Pleasure if tasted to the last becomes 
stale ; it becomes staler than its symbol, the nectar of 
the grape that has been left in the glasses of topers 
after a night's carousal. 

What is the result of a life in Sansara ? Man's feet 
will become sore and his heart will be full of disap- 
pointment. The Buddhist says: The circular path of 
the Sansara is strewn all over with fiery coals. 



122 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE 

Desire burns like a flame and satiety fills the soul 
with disgust. Enjoyment, however, is the oscillation 
between both. Desire is want ; it is parching thirst and 
pinching hunger. It is destitution, poverty, dearth. 
Satiety, on the other hand, is not at all a preferable 
state. It is tedious and wearisome monotony ; it is life 
without a purpose. The fulfilment of want means an 
emptiness of aspirations, it produces the nausea of 
maudlin misery, and the absence of desire is felt as 
an actual torture. A longing rises in the heart for the 
thirst of an unsatisfied desire and thus the pendulum 
swings back to the place from whence it came. 

And happiness ! What is the happiness of a world- 
ling ? It is merely an imaginary line between both 
extremes. The pendulum that swings to a certain 
height on the one side will necessarily reach exactly 
the same height on the other. It does not come to 
rest in the middle. There is no escape from this 
law, and if a man of the world be prudent he will 
moderate the oscillations so as to diminish the misery. 
Not going to the highest pitch of desire, he will not 
be obliged to drain the cup of myrrh to the lees. 

"Why does mankind continue to move in the circu- 
lar course upon the fiery coals of Sansara? Because 
their eyes are covered with the veil of Maya. Indi- 
vidual existence, the Buddhists say, is a sham, an il- 
lusion, a dream woven of the subtle stuff of sensations. 
Man imagines that his sensory world is a reality. 
Buddhism teaches that the world of the senses is like 
a veil upon our eyes. 

The veil of Maya does not exactly deceive man ; 
on the contrary, the veil is the means by which man 
knows whatsoever he knows of truth. If the veil were 
not upon man's eyes, he would see nothing, he would 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE 123 

be blinded, as was Moses in the presence of God. In 
itself the world of sensations is not a deceit, if it is not 
made so by being misunderstood. 

The error, it is true, is natural. All errors origi- 
nate according to natural laws ; so did, for instance, 
the ideas of the flatness of the earth and of the ap- 
parent motions of the heavenly bodies. But if we 
err, the fault is not with the facts that lead astray, 
but with us. We deceive ourselves by our own error. 
The veil of Maya makes us feel our own being in 
contradistinction to that of all- existence ; and this 
'*we," the ^^I," the ego in its separateness is a self- 
deception. We live the dream of a pseudo-existence. 

From the growth of the ego rise the self-seeking 
yearnings. Egoism begets egotism, and passions are 
the fruits of egotism. Passions produce pain and bring 
upon man the many evils of his earthly miseries. 

Is there no escape from Sansara ? Yes there is ! 
The illusion that considers individual being as a real- 
ity can be destroyed. The veil of Maya can be lifted ; 
which means, that its nature can be understood. In this 
way shall we recognize the error of egoism. There is 
no ego in the sense of a separate and individual exist- 
ence, and with this truth it will dawn upon us that the 
regulation of action, as if there were an ego, is a fatal 
mistake. This mistake lies at the bottom of all the 
wretchedness of Sansara, and we can free ourselves 
only, so teaches Buddhism, by enlightenment, by un- 
derstanding the truth, by abandoning the illusion. He 
who has attained enlightenment is a Buddha. Buddha 
means the enlightened one. 

The highest stage of Buddhist perfection, the 
stage where a man becomes a Buddha is called Nir- 
vana. Nirvana means extinction. As a flame is ex- 



124 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

tinguished and ceases to be, so the ignis fatiius of the 
ego can also be extinguished. The egoistic error being 
extinguished, we enter Nirvana, 

Nirvana means peace ; it means liberation from il- 
lusion, and thus it brings a freedom of desire. 

Nirvana is not annihilation. It is the annihilation 
of error only ; and in this respect it reveals to him 
who lives in Nirvana, the higher life of true reality. 
In Buddhistic literature Nirvana is sometimes charac- 
terized in its negative aspect as an extinction of sham- 
existence, and sometimes again in its positive aspect 
as the life of truth and immortality. It is often de- 
scribed in most positive terms as true happiness, as 
a state of perfect bliss, as living in the realm of eter- 
nity, where there is no pain, no misery, no death. 
This appears to be contradictory to its literal meaning, 
but it seems to me that it is not. 

As soon as we recognize the error of individual ex- 
istence, we lift ourselves above the narrowness of ego- 
ism. We can in this state of mind contemplate our 
own fate from a higher standpoint ; we can easily and 
we do willingly give up our pursuit of happiness ; we 
can live in this world as though we were not living. 
Our '^we," our ''I," our ''ego," the separateness of 
our individuality has ceased to be, and the life of the 
universe lives in us. We have become stewards of 
cosmic existence. In this way our joys as well as our 
pains are transfigured and a divine peace will inherit 
our souls that are now free from desire. 

Pain, together with the vanity of pleasure, will 
diminish in the degree of the enlightenment attained. 
This is a law that is demonstratable in such exact 
sciences as physiology and biology. Our scientists 
inform us that the use of the sensorv nerves blunts feel- 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 125 

ing and favors intellection. The highest sensory nerve, 
in which the intellectual element is comparatively 
most perfect, is the optic nerve. The retina of the 
optic nerve, while perceiving the differences of infinit- 
esimally small fractions in ether-waves, has become in- 
sensible to pleasurable as well as to painful feelings. 

The idea of Nirvana, it must be said, is of a most 
dangerous character, if it is conceived as mere pes- 
simism in its negative features alone. It will in that 
case lead to apathy, to destruction and death. Did 
perhaps Gautama Buddha himself conceive Nirvana 
in a spirit of negativism ? Perhaps he did. At least it 
is certain that many of his disciples did ; for the Bud- 
dhism of the East has produced most fatal effects of in- 
difference and retrogression upon those races that em- 
braced its faith. 

If Nirvana is conceived in its negativeness. Bud- 
dhism will be a dualistic religion. In that case we have 
existence and non-existence, Sansara and Nirvana, 
sham-reality and nothingness. If, however, Sansara 
is conceived as an illusion and Nirvana as the destruc- 
tion of the illusion, we need not resort to the nihilistic 
world conception of a dual nothingness ; we need not 
derive from the Buddhistic premises the negative 
ethics of destroying life together with the illusion of 
egoism. 

One of the most important truths proclaimed by 
Buddha, was the doctrine that man can enter into 
Nirvana while he lives. When Gautama had found 
redemption from the evils of existence, he resolved to 
announce his gospel to the world. He went to Benares 
and on the way he met one of his old acquaintances 
who asked him : 

" What is it that makes you so glad and yet so calm ? ' 



126 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 



Buddha answered : 



" I have found the path of peace, and am now free from all 
desires." 

Little interested in Gautama's bliss, his acquaint- 
ance further enquired where he was going ; and we are 
told in the Buddhist legend : 

The Enlightened one answered : 

" I am now going to the city of Benares to establish the king- 
dom of righteousness, to give light to those enshrouded in dark- 
ness, and open the gate of immortality to men." 

He gave up fasting, for he looked upon the op- 
pression of the body as a vain effort of conquering the 
evils of existence. He abandoned asceticism as a 
means of salvation. 

It seems strange that life can be gained only through 
annihilation of self; immortality is possible only through 
the death of the transient and the happiness of eter- 
nal peace will come with the crucifixion of the desire 
for happiness. It seems strange, but it is not. How- 
ever, it is natural that the deeper a truth is, the more 
contradictory it will appear to those who are prisoners 
still in the bondage of error. 

Buddha's doctrines were misunderstood, misinter- 
preted, and misused. Yet they have given strength 
in temptation, comfort in misery, peace in tribula- 
tion, solace in death to many millions of toiling, as- 
piring and suffering human hearts. 



THE HUMAN SOUL. 



The practical purpose of Religion is the salvation 
of human souls. When Jesus was walking by the Sea 
of Galilee, he saw two brethren, Simon, called Peter, 
and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea : 
for they were fishers. And he sayeth unto them : '^ Fol- 
low me and I will make you fishers of men." 

And so shall ministers be fishers of men to save 
human souls. But how can they save human souls 
when we are told that modern psychology is a psychol- 
ogy without a soul ? The immortal soul, consisting 
of a trancendent substance, as it was supposed to be 
by the old schools of orthodox theology, does not exist. 
There is no such a thing as an eternal and mystical 
ego which continues to live even if the body dies. 

The great Scotch philosopher, Hume, said : 

" As for me, whenever I contemplate what is inmost in what I 
call my own self, I always come in contact with such or such spe- 
cial perception as of cold, heat, light or shadow, love or hate, 
pleasure or pain. I never come unawares upon my mind existing 
in a state void of perceptions : I never observe aught save percep- 
tion If any one, after serious reflection and without preju- 
dices, thinks he has any other idea of himself, I confess that I can 
reason no longer with him. The best I can say for him is that per- 
haps he is right no less than I, and that on this point our natures 
are essentially different. It is possible that he may perceive some- 
thing simple and permanent which he calls himself, but as for me 
I am quite sure I possess no such principle." * 

*Hume, Works, Vol. I, p. 321. 



128 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

Modern psychology has fully adopted Hume's posi- 
tion. If a man speaks about himself, he means per- 
haps his body, or a certain part of his body. In an- 
other case he may mean a special idea of his mind. It 
is that idea which at the time is prominent in his soul 
and which he pronounces as his opinion. Formerly it 
was supposed that the ego who pronounces the opinion, 
"I say this and I say that," was one thing, and the 
opinion adopted by that ego another thing. And this 
ego was supposed to form the basis of man's person- 
ality, its supernatural unity. Modern psychology now 
contends that this ego is identical with its opinion ; 
the ''I say" is identical with the idea pronounced ; or, 
in other words, the ego and its contents are one. 
Accordingly, our ego is constantly changing, for it is 
now this, now that idea, which is prominent in our 
mind. An ego by itself, a thinking subject without an 
idea, a perception, or sensation to be thought or felt, 
does not exist ; and our soul is nothing but the sum 
total of all the ideas that live in our brain. 

Very well then ! The ego, as a thing independent 
of its contents, is a sham and always was a sham. Can 
a man be afraid of losing that which he never pos- 
sessed? Certainly not! Renounce that ego, and aban- 
don your anxiety about its preservation. 

The matter, however, is different concerning the 
preservation of your soul. Is the soul of man less valu- 
able since it has been proved that it lacks the unity 
which the ego was supposed to afford to it. Not in the 
least ! Our soul, whatever it be, remains as valuable 
and precious as ever ; if it is the sum total of our 
thoughts merely, yet that is the sum total of our intel- 
lectual and moral existence. The ideas which in 
their totality constitute ourselves, are the elements 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 129 

that condition our actions, and our actions shape 
our future ; they will lead us to higher planes, or they 
will undo us and wreck our lives. Thus the purpose of 
religion, to save the souls of man, it seems, becomes 
rather more urgent than before. 

Science seems to destroy Religion. But it does not ; 
it destroys its errors only. Indeed, it becomes the 
basis of Religion, and Religion based on Science will 
be truer, purer, and grander. When our long cherished 
errors fade away before the light of science, life appears 
so empty and truth seems void of comfort. Let us, 
however, not be dismayed ! After all, truth is better 
than error and a deeper insight always proves in the 
end that the truths taught by science are by far nobler 
and greater than the loftiest fiction and fairy-tales of 
our imagination can be. 

Let us but consider how easily souls are lost ! The 
purpose of religion becomes more imperative when we 
bear in mind the fact that souls can grow and expand. 
We can implant in the souls of men new thoughts 
and purer ideas, which will preserve them in tempta- 
tions and guide them through the many allurements 
and dangers of the world. We can by instruction and 
example transmit to the minds of children our own 
souls, and thus build again our characters in the grow- 
ing generation. 

Goethe said: 'The son should be better than the 
father'; and yet the son can be better only if the 
father rears the better part of himself in the soul of 
his son. Thus humanity will progress, it will advance 
more and more in the triumphant march of evolu- 
tion. 

The child that lies in the cradle possesses a most pre- 
cious soul. But the infant's mind is a promise rather 



I30 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

than a real and full grown soul ; it is the bud not the 
fruit; it is a dear hope, a potentiality, but not the harvest 
of maturity. The most valuable parts of his soul, the 
elements of manly strength and of moral character that 
will give stability to his will and direction to his pur- 
pose, must be implanted into the tender mind of the 
child. All that which makes of man a human being, 
must be grafted upon the inherited predisposition of 
his mind. And how easily is that purity lost, how 
quickly is that innocence gone which appears as the 
sweetest charm in the beaming eyes of children. When 
they come in contact with the lower tendencies of life, 
how readily evil thoughts enter their minds and impure 
ideas poison their souls and the habits of their lives. 
Therefore David prayed, '' Create in me a clean heart, 
O God, and renew a right spirit within me." 

The soul of man is not immortal in the sense that 
matter and energy are now known to be indestruc- 
tible. On the contrary, the soul of man is mortal. But 
seeing that we can make it immortal, that we can pre- 
serve our souls even after death in the coming genera- 
tions, that we can implant our spirit in our children, 
the purpose of religion grows in its scope and im- 
portance. 

The pure, the noble, the great, the moral thought 
will live and will exercise upon everyone a wholesome 
influence. If our soul is the sum total of our hopes 
and wishes, of our aspirations and longings, of our con- 
cepts and our ideas, let us take heed and beware not 
to introduce evil thoughts, but let us receive into our 
soul the love of truth and the eagerness of performing 
that which is right and just. This is the object of re- 
ligion; and this is the sum total of the religion of man- 
kind. 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 131 

Bad thoughts as well as good thoughts are like 
leaven ; and a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. 
Let the religion of humanity thus enter your souls not 
as words without a meaning that slumber like a dead 
letter in your mind, but as a power of enthusiasm 
which, like the leaven in meal, pervades all your 
thoughts and sentiments until the whole be leavened 
and changed into another and better substance. 

Morality is that which preserves our soul, and it is 
the moral part of our soul only which we wish to pre- 
serve in our children. Immorality is that which leads 
to wreck and ruin, but morality makes life everlasting. 

The immortality thus acquired is greatly different 
from the old dogmatic view of immortality. The old view 
of immortality is a chimera of Utopian character, the 
new view is a truth established by science, a truth that 
can be verified. The old view of immortality is a holy 
legend, and the best that can be said of it is this, that 
it foreboded the true view of immortality which teaches 
that there is a continuation of our soul-life after death. 
This continuation, however, is not an inherent quality 
of the soul, nor is it given to us as an act of mercy. 
The continuation of our soul-life must be acquired by 
our own efforts, it must be worked for, it must be 
earned by hard struggles, and it must be deserved. 

I see all the world gathering earthly treasures to 
leave an inheritance to their children. But I see few 
who care for their souls. All interests are taken up with 
the desire for riches, but the most valuable riches which 
you might possess, remain neglected. You provide for 
meat and raiment and other necessities of life, but you 
disregard to provide for the immortality of your soul. 

What are all the possessions of man if he is not 
wise enough to use them well, and what is power and 



132 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

earthly blessings if the men to whose lot they have 
fallen, cease to progress or even commence to degen- 
erate ? What is an inheritance left to your children, be it 
ever so great, if you disregard the education of their 
souls? The word of Christ will forever remain a great 
truth: ''What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain 
the whole world and lose his own soul?" (mark 
VIII. 36.) 



THE UNITY OF THE SOUL. 



The main difference that obtains between the old 
and the new psychology concerns the unity of the 
soul. The old psychology considers the soul as an 
indivisible being whose centre is found in the ego. 
This ego-entity is said to be the subject of the psy- 
chical states ; it is the subject in the original sense of 
the word ; i. e. that which underlies. The soul, ac- 
cording to this view, is not the feelings and the 
thoughts which ensoul a human being, but it is a mys- 
terious something which is in possession of feelings 
and thoughts, and the nature of the mysterious some- 
thing, of the underlying subject, is unknown to us. 

Modern psychology does not consider the soul as 
an indivisible beins:. The soul is not an ego-entity, 
a subject, that has feelings and ideas, but these feel- 
ings and ideas are actual parts of the soul. A man's 
soul is the totality of his feelings, of his thoughts, of 
his ideals. 

This view may easily and wrongly be interpreted 
as if the soul were simply a heap of feelings, as if no 
unity existed and as if the ideas dwelling together in 
one and the same brain were like a bag of peas, 
which have no connection, no bond of union, among 
themselves. Tlys is not so. The Seelings, ideas, and 



134 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

ideals in a man form indeed a unity — only this unity 
is a hierarchical system, it is a unity of arrangement 
and does not mean that the soul is an indivisible unit 
or a kind of psychic atom. This truth can most 
clearly be expressed by contrasting the two views in 
two German words : The soul is not an Einheit, but 
an Einheitlichkeit ; not a unit, but a unification. 

And the unity of the soul produced by unification 
is by no means an indifferent quality. The unity 
of the soul, I feel almost constrained to say, is the 
soul of the soul. The way in which certain ideas are 
combined in a unity constitutes the most individual 
and most remarkable and also the most characteristic 
feature of a personality. Also the energy of nerve- 
action, the vigor with which the different ideas re- 
spond to their stimuli is of incalculable importance. 

Suppose we could put together the soul of a man 
from a given number of ideas as we put together a mo- 
saic from a given number of colored stones. The stones 
and their colors, their brightness, their shape and the 
variety of their colors are of importance, but the pat- 
tern will after all make the picture of the mosaic. The 
same ideas are put into the minds of thirty or forty 
children in one and the same class-room, but how dif- 
ferently do their minds develop ! Even children of the 
same parents who live in the same surroundings and 
under the same conditions, receiving the same in- 
struction and having before their eyes the same exam- 
ples, will develop quite distinct and divergent indi- 
vidualities. The very same thoughts in two different 
minds do not necessarily produce a sameness of soul. 
In one mind everything may be methodically ar- 
ranged, so that on the proper occasion the proper 
thoughts turn up at once and all the ideas form a 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 135 

33^stem, so that order reigns everywhere. Again in 
another mind there may be the very same thought- 
material, yet order is lacking, confusion prevails, 
everything stands topsy-turvy as if the brain were an 
old lumber-room in which things have been set aside 
without any plan of consideration. 

It is wonderful how rich the possibilities of soul- 
patterns, so to speak, are ! We cannot say that this one 
and this one only is the true ideal soul, for, provided 
that those indispensable soul-structures which con- 
stitute the humanity of a man are not lacking, we 
may have and indeed we do have, an unlimited variety 
of personalities, the beauties of each being peculiar to 
themselves. 

People often show a tendency to classify the per- 
sonalities of groat men in higher and lower classes 
asking such questions as these : Who was greater 
Shakespeare or Goethe? Plato or Aristotle? Bis- 
mark or Moltke ? The answer is, we cannot measure 
the greatness of mind by a scale so as to have the 
great men of thought and action classified by degrees 
as number one, two, three, etc. 

The soul of man, being the organisation of his 
ideas, is too subtle a substance, — indeed we should not 
even call it so for it is form and not substance — the 
soul of man is too subtle to be weighed or measured, 
and the worth of a noble soul is so peculiar, so unique 
that, irrespective of its shortcomings which we must 
expect even great men to have, we can compare one 
soul with other souls only in order to set them off by 
contrast and to appreciate their qualities by contrast, 
but we must recognise that each soul possesses a spe- 
cial charm of its own, each soul is an individuality 



136 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE, 

which as such is not classifiable as higher or lower, 
better or worse than other individualities. 

Individuality being a natural and also a most val- 
uable feature of a man's soul, it is our duty to respect 
individuality. Every man has a right to be individ- 
ual provided the traits of his individuality do not 
come in conflict with the rights of his fellow-beings. 
And the application of this right in educational affairs 
is greater still. We are bound to respect the indi- 
vidualities of children also. Parents, educators, and 
teachers have to observe and study the characters of 
the souls entrusted to their care. They have to prune 
and guide the growth of individualities wherever 
whims and vagaries arise, yet they should do so with 
due discrimination and with a becoming respect for 
the individuality of the growing minds. 



GHOSTS. 



The Norwegian poet Henrik Ibsen has written a 
most awe-inspiring drama under the mysterious title 
''Ghosts." Does this most modern author believe in 
spirits? Does he take us into a haunted house? 
Are not ghosts and haunted houses left as a survival 
only ? O no ! The ghosts of which Henrik Ibsen 
speaks are everywhere ; they are not exceptional cases ; 
for we ourselves are visited by the spirits of former 
ages ; our brain is haunted by ghosts. It is full of the 
proclivities, the dispositions, the ideas, and the sins of 
our ancestors. 

Mrs. Alving, the widow of a dissolute husband, 
and mother of a son whose life has been poisoned by 
his father's sin, witnesses her son's behavior in the 
adjoining room. It is the exact repetition of a scene 
in which her husband had played her son's role some 
twenty years ago. There is his ghost reappearing. In 
considering the weighty seriousness of the truth, that 
we inherit, not only the character of our ancestors, 
but also the curses of their sins ; that all our institu- 
tions and habits are full of ideas inherited from a dead 
past, she says : ''I am afraid of myself, because there 
is in me something of a ghost-like inherited tendency 
of which I can never free myself I almost think 



138 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

we are all of us ghosts. It is not only what we have 
inherited from father and mother that reappears in us, 
it is all kinds of dead old beliefs and things of that 
sort. These ghosts are not the living substance of 
our brain, but they are there nevertheless .and we 
cannot get rid of them. When I take up a news- 
paper to read, it is as though I saw ghosts speaking 
in between the lines. There must be ghosts all over 
the country. They must be as thick as the sands of 
the sea." 

It is perfectly and literally true that our soul is 
haunted by ghosts ; nay, our entire soul consists of 
ghosts. Our brain is the trysting place where they 
meet and live ; where they grow and combine, and in 
their combinations they propagate, they create new 
thoughts which according to their nature will be be- 
neficent or baneful. 

What are these ghosts ? They are our experiences, 
the impressions of our surroundings upon the sentient 
living substance of our existence. They are the reac- 
tions that take place upon the impressions of our sur- 
roundings ; they are our yearnings and cravings ; they 
are our thoughts and imaginations. They are our 
errors and vices, our hopes and our ideals. 

Henrik Ibsen shows that the ghosts which are the 
inherited sins of our fathers lead unto death. What 
an overwhelming and horrific scene is the end of the 
drama, where the son asks his mother to hand him 
the poison in case the awful disease will pass upon 
him which will soften his brain and spread the eternal 
night of imbecility over his soul. The mother in her 
anxiety to calm her son's wild fancies, promises to do 
so: ''Here is my hand upon it," she says, with a 
trembling voice: ''I will — if it becomes necessary. 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 139 

But it will not become necessary. No, no ! It will 
never become a possibility." 

There is a law of the conservation of matter and 
energy ; but there is also a law of the conservation of 
the stuff that ghosts are made of. The law holds good 
not only in the material world, but in the spiritual 
world also. Every vice transmits its curse ; and the 
moment comes when the unfortunate mother has to 
face the fatal attack of the terrible disease. 

The heroine of the drama, the innocent and 
wretched mother had sought help of the clergyman — 
the man whom she had loved. When her husband 
had betrayed her, had poisoned her in her youth, she 
fled to him in wild excitement and cried : '' Here I 
am, take m.e ! " But the clergyman's stern virtue had 
turned her away from his door, and he prevailed upon 
her to remain a dutiful wife to her vicious husband. 
She had tried to find comfort in the religious injunc- 
tions which he preached to her. She lived a life in 
obedience to what he represented as her duty. But 
now she says to him : '' I began to examine your teach- 
ing in the seams. I only wished to undo a single 
stitch, but when I had got that undone, the whole 
thing came to pieces, and then I found that it was all 
chain-stitch sewing-machine work." 

The distressed woman feels only the curse of law 
and order which have been invented for the salvation 
of mankind. Her experience leads her to trust rather 
in anarchy than in the threadbare superstition which 
our generation has in favor of the letter of the law. 
The sternness of virtue cannot save us, nor our blind 
obedience to sanctified traditions. She exclaims : 
'•'What nonsense all that is about law and order. I 
often think it is that which exactly causes all the mis- 



MO HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

eries there are in the world. I can no longer endure 
these bonds ; I cannot ! I must work my way out to 
freedom ! " 

Here lies the cure of the disease. We must work 
our way out to freedom. The simple method of shak- 
ing off law and order will only increase our troubles. 
We must learn to understand the nature of ourselves. 
By patient work alone can we exorcise the evil spirits 
that haunt our souls ; and we can nourish and foster 
those other spirits which shower blessings upon our 
lives and the lives of our children. We cannot escape 
the natural law which, inviolate, regulates the growth 
of our souls ; but we can accommodate ourselves to 
the law and the same law, that works disaster and 
death, will produce happiness and life. 

Superabundance of life gives a power that might 
produce great and noble results. But when the life is 
stagnant as was that of Mrs. Alving's husband, a vigo- 
rous youth exuberant in strength and health, an un- 
satisfiable craving for pleasure takes the place of a 
want of activity; and instead of useful work, vicious 
habits are produced. The germ of many diseases is 
a morbid pursuit of enjoyment. Pleasure is made the 
aim of life, leading astray step by step into the abyss 
of misery and death. Not that happiness and pleasures 
were wrong ! But it is wrong to make of them the 
purpose of life. Let happiness be the accompani- 
ment of the performance of duty and happiness will 
follow as the shadow follows the body. If we pursue 
happiness, we turn our back upon the sun of life and 
we shall never find either satisfaction or happiness. 

* 

The law of the conservation of soul-life with its 
blessings and its curses has not only a gloomy side, it 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE, 141 

has also a bright side, and it behooves us when con- 
sidering our heir-loom of curses, to remember that 
they are small in comparison to the grand inheritance 
of blessings which have come to us from thousands of 
generations. What is all our activity, our doing, and 
achieving, our dearest ideals — what are they but the 
torch of life handed down from our ancestors ? Gustav 
Freytag, the German novelist, might also have called 
almost all his novels '^ Ghosts." Especially the ''Lost 
Manuscript" and the series of novels called "The An- 
cestors " are studies illustrative of the same truth. Yet 
while Ibsen paints the dark side only of the law of the 
conservation of ideas, Gustav Freytag paints the dark 
and Ihe bright sides. Gustav Freytag says : 

"It is well that from us men usually remains concealed, what 
is inheritance from the remote past, and what the independent 
acquisition of our own existence ; since our life would become full 
of anxiety and misery, if we, as continuations of the people of the 
past, had perpetually to reckon with the blessings and curses which 
former times leave hanging over the problems of our own existence. 
But it is indeed a joyous labor, at times, by a retrospective glance 
into the past, to bring into fullest consciousness the fact that 
many of our successes and achievements have only been made pos- 
sible through the possessions that have come to us from the lives 
of our parents, aijW through that also which the previous ancestral 
life of our family has accomplished and produced for us." 

We have to bear the evil consequences of the 
vices of our ancestors, but these evils can be overcome; 
and when the}^ cannot be overcome, they will after all 
find a termination, for death is the wages of sin. 

The nature of sin is its contrariness to life ; its 
main feature is the impossibility of a continued exist- 
ence. Extinction being the natural consequence of 
viciousness, the wages of sin are at the same time the 
saviour, the redeemer from the evils of sin. 



142 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

If all the parents in the whole world were like 
Chamberlain Alving, the ruthless father of Oswald 
Alving, and like Mrs. Engstrand, the frivolous mother 
of the coquettish girl Regina, humanity would soon 
come to an end. It may be that none of us is entirely 
free from these traits ; but some of us are so more or 
less. In some of us these traits are mixed with enno- 
bling features, and we are striving to overcome that 
which we have recognised as bad. However, nature 
is constantly at work to prune the growing genera- 
tions. Death is the wages of sin, and the bright side 
of this awful truth is the constant amelioration of the 
race. 



THE RELIGION OF RESIGNATION. 



Among the many religions upon earth there are 
two that exceed all the others in the number of their 
devotees. They are Buddhism and Christianity. 
Neither Judaism nor Mohammedanism, nor even 
Paganism, can approach them. The latter taken to- 
gether do not as yet equal one of the two former; it is 
as if the world were divided between them. 

Buddhism and Christianity have one common 
feature. Both proclaim the gospel of salvation from 
the evils of this world by resignation. Both point to 
a higher life which can be gained through the sacrifice 
of our individual selves. Other religions require sac- 
rifices of lambs and goats. Buddhism and Christianity 
demand the surrender of self. Mohammedanism prom- 
ises enjoyment and happiness upon earth and in 
heaven. Both Buddhism and Christianity preach en- 
durance in affliction and submission to tribulation. 

It seems natural to seek pleasure and to shun pain. 
The religious injunctions of Buddha and Christ are a 
reversion of this instinctive desire. They preach this : 
Do not shun pain, and do not seek pleasure. Says 
Christ : '' If any man will come after me, let him deny 
himself, and take up his cross and follow me." 

Buddhism, it is well known, did not succeed in 
overcoming the many superstitions of its converts. 
Christianity became ossified as soon as its mythology 



144 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

was systematized into theological dogmas. The Chris- 
tians, while clinging to the letter of their creed which 
killeth, lost the spirit of their teacher's doctrine. 

We shall not here point out the errors of these 
religions, but try to find the key to their wonderful 
success. And can there be any doubt about it ? 

Their success can be due only to their thorough 
conquest of death. The Buddhist who has taken his 
refuge in Buddha, and the Christian who is earnest in 
his following of Christ, will not tremble in the face of 
death, for to them death has lost its sting. The 
Christian lives in God, and the Buddhist has even upon 
earth spiritually entered into Nirvana. They have 
placed all their hopes in a higher life, '' where there 
shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, 
neither shall there be any more pain, for the former 
things are passed away." 

This victory over death is not accomplished by avoid- 
ing death and by shunning the anguish of life, but by 
a surrender to death of that which cannot escape death 
and by finding rest in the ideal world of immortal life. 
Whatever be our fate, — they say unto themselves, — 
the kingdom of God will be victorious ; all other things 
are mere trifles; therefore let us remain children of 
God and we shall inherit his kingdom. Luther sings : 

Strong tower and refuge is our God, 
Right goodly shield and weapon ; 
He helps us free in every need, 
That hath us now o'ertaken. 
Take they then our life, 
Wealth, honor, child and wife. 
Let these all be gone, 
No triumph have they won. 
The kingdom ours remaineth. 

This song with its powerful melody was the slogan 
of the new faith that regenerated Christianity and 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE, 145 

conciliated religion with the progress that science 
had made before the Reformation. Yet Luther and 
other Christians believed in the immortality of their 
ego, and it seems as if their religious confidence were 
based upon this error. We have ceased to believe in 
a mystical soul-substance which was formerly supposed 
to inhabit the body as a stranger, and which after death 
will hover about somewhere as a spectre. We have 
ceased to believe in ghosts ; science has banished the 
phantoms of disembodied spirits out of the provinces 
of psychology and philosophy. But must v/e for that 
reason cease to believe in life and in spiritual life ? 
Must we therefore consider death as a finality? Does 
not science teach the persistence of life and of spiritual 
life; and is there the slightest reason that we should 
cease to believe in the immortality of our ideals? Is it 
not a fact, scientifically indubitable, that every work 
done, be it good or evil, continues in its effects upon 
future events ? Is it not a fact established upon reli- 
able observations that the evolution of mankind, and 
of all life generally upon earth, is one great and con- 
tinous whole; that even to-day the efforts of our an- 
cestors are preserved in the present generation ; their 
features, their characters, their souls now live in us. 
Certainly not all features are preserved, but those only 
which nature considered worth preserving. So our 
characters, our thoughts, our aspirations, our souls 
will live in future generations, if they are strong 
enough, if they are noble and elevating. In order to 
be strong, they must be in accord with nature, they 
must be true. In order to live, they must be engen- 
dered by the evolutionary tendency in nature, which 
constantly endeavors to lift life to higher planes. It 
must be, as the Christian expresses it, in harmony with 



146 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

God, if God is meant to be that power in nature and 
in our hearts that ever again and again prompts us to 
struggle and to strive for something higher. 

Our soul can no longer be considered as that unity 
which it used to be to our forefathers. It is a part of 
the soul of humanity in a certain phase of its develop- 
ment. As such it is a rich combination of certain 
ideals, thoughts, and aspirations of hopes and fears, of 
wishes and of ideals. Our ego is nothing but an ideal 
thread on which are strung the invaluable pearls of our 
spiritual existence. The ego is nothing but the tem- 
poral succession in which these ideas are thought. 

It is not the belief in an immortalized ego that can 
conquer death, but it is the surrender of this ego and 
of all its egotistic desires. This ego we now know is 
no real thing ; it is an illusion and possesses a fleeting, 
momentary, sham existence only. Reality of life is 
not to be found there, and if its continuity is broken 
in death, our individual existence ceases, but not 
necessarily the life of our soul. The ideal world of 
our mind can outlive our body, and we can gain an 
immortality of that part of ourselves which is most 
worthy of being preserved. 

This it appears, is the truth in Buddhism and Chris- 
tianity, this is the secret that explains why they con- 
quered the world. Resign all egotism, do not place 
your hope upon this fleeting existence, and devote 
your efforts to the creation of that higher life, of that 
ideal world, where death is unknown and the petty 
tribulations of life disappear ! 

This life cannot be realized by the poet and 
philosopher only, not by the great only, the heroes of 
mankind : it can be realized by every one of us. It is 
this that Christ preached, and it is this that Buddha pro- 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 147 

claimed. Every one of us is called to participate in 
the higher life, for the intellectuality of a higher life 
is one phase of it only, and it is not its grandest part. 
Its sum-total is comprised in all those many ideals 
and aspirations that, in one word, we call morality. 
It is, as Paul says, Faith, Hope, and Charity ; but 
Charity is the greatest among them. 

Men who have given up their individual ego, who 
have risen to the height of that spiritual life which 
knoweth not death, will live in this world as though 
they lived not ; they that weep, as though they wept 
not, and they that rejoice as though they rejoiced not, 
and they that buy as though they possessed not, and 
they that use this world as not abusing it : for the 
fashion of this world passeth away. 

They will live, as though they lived not, because 
their life is no longer the fleeting sham-existence of 
their egotistic desires. Their life has become an ex- 
pression of that higher life which is immortal. They 
buy as though they possessed not, because they know 
that they shall have to leave their possessions. 

They consider themselves as stewards to whom 
property is entrusted for a wise use. Even their joys 
and pains, their recreations and troubles become 
transfigured by the universality of the spirit that ani- 
mates their whole being. 

The religion of the future will not be Christian 
dogmatism, it will be no creed, no belief in any of the 
tenets of the church. Yet it must preserve the spirit 
of Christianity which has enabled it to conquer death. 
It must be a religion of resignation. If thou wilt 
enter into life eternal, cease to cling to that which 
perishes, and become one with the Life Immortal ! 



THE RELIGION OF JOY. 



The Christian gospel is a tiding of joy ; but its joy 
is very different from the happiness that is so eagerly 
sought for by thousands and millions of wretched 
beings who tire themselves out by hunting shadows. 

It is natural that only two religions have a festival 
of rejoicing in the birth of a child destined to be the 
saviour of the world ; Buddhism, namely, and Chris- 
tianity. 

Buddhism and Christianity are the religions of re- 
signation. They demand that we shall willingly and un- 
hesitatingly take up our cross ; that we shall not shirk 
tribulations, suffering, and least of all death ; that we 
shall renounce all cravings for pleasure, sacrifice all 
desires of egotism, and in fact give up our very self, 
which is the source of all our unsatisfied yearnings. 

Buddhism and Christianity, being relrgions of self- 
denial, have been called pessimistic world-concep- 
tions. In a certain sense they are pessimistic, in an- 
other sense they are not. They ought to be called 
melioristic. Recognizing to its full extent the truth 
of pessimism, recognizing all the misery that exists in 
the world and the wretchedness of living creatures, 
the religions of self-denial are preached to show the 
path of salvation. In this sense Buddhism and Chris- 
tianity are the religions of joy. 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 149 

Says the Apostle: '^ Rejoice alwa}s ! " and again 
he describes himself and his co-workers as the am- 
bassadors of Christ : ' 'As unknown, and yet well known; 
as dying, and behold we live ; as chastened, and not 
killed ; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing ; as poor, 
yet making many rich ; as having nothing, and yet pos- 
sessing all things." Says Christ : ''Rejoice and be 
exceeding glad ! " and the angel said to the shepherds : 
"Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of 
great joy, which shall be to all people." 

Wherever a religion of self-denial has been 
preached, it has always been a gospel of cheer, of 
gladness, of salvation. This seems to be contradictory, 
and yet it is natural. 

The main idea of the religions of self-denial is a 
truth which, if lost, we should have to discover again. 
Similarly, if our knowledge of the law of gravitation 
were lost, we should have to discover it again. And 
if another than Newton had calculated its formula, 
the formula would be exactly the same as it is now, 
whether it were expressed in Greek, or in English, or 
in Chinese. 

Spiritual truth is no less rigorous than mathemati- 
cal truth. Spiritual truth has to develop according to 
law no less than the flowers in the fields, no less than 
human civilization, the arts and the sciences. When 
the blossoms blow in springtide, it appears as if the 
earth had long been preparing and expecting this mo- 
ment. Thus when Buddha went under the fig tree, 
where the idea of salvation enlightened his mind, the 
Buddhistic gospels relate that the angels sung, "This 
is the night the ages waited for." 

Is it surprising that so wonderful a truth as that 
life is love, salvation is self-surrender, and joy is the 



I50 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

sacrifice of all desire, has been clothed in myths and 
decked with miraculous legends? Is it surprising that 
great institutions were founded with ceremonies and 
rites in order to make comprehensible this spiritual 
truth to those who could not grasp it ? And again, is 
it surprising that in all these institutions the truth is 
overgrown and hidden by the myth ? The letter that 
killeth has prevailed over the spirit ! 

Science with ruthless criticism destroys the my- 
thology which has so long prided itself as the truth. 
Yet science will never destroy the truth which has 
been the vitality in the germs from which sprang Bud- 
dhism as well as Christianity. And the religion of 
science, if it is to be a live power, must preach the 
same truth. 

Science recognizes the struggle for life, but the re- 
ligion of science brings peace. It brings the peace of 
soul that makes man one with that power which is the 
source of all life, one with that actuality which is the 
way, the truth, and the life ; so that what appeared as 
a struggle for selfish ends, now becomes work, and 
work, whatever it be, pleasant or disagreeable, sowing 
or reaping, ruling or obeying, drudgery or the work of 
enthusiasm and love, is all transfigured by being con- 
ceived as the performance of duly. 

The religion of science does not preach asceticism, 
when it demands self-denial and a radical surrender 
of egotism. On the contrary, like the good tidings of 
Bethlehem, it proclaims a religion of joy — not for 
those who are rich, but for all the world ; first for the 
poor, yet also for the rich, if their hearts are fit to re- 
ceive the gospel. 



THE FESTIVAL OF RESURRECTION. 



Spring comes again ; and Eastertide reminds us of 
nature's immortality. There is no death ! What seems 
so is transition. When in wintry weather the sun hides 
his face, northern blasts tear the leaves from our trees ; 
but now the sun is returned and new life grows on 
every branch, the verdure reappears in the fields and 
man's heart believes with strengthened confidence in 
the realization of human ideals. 

Easter day is the festival of Christ's resurrection, 
and the question has often been raised whether Easter 
day can with any consistency be celebrated by those 
who have ceased to believe in the sacred legend that 
Jesus Christ who died on the cross rose on the third 
day from the dead. We firmly maintain that it can 
and that it ought to be celebrated by all those who be- 
lieve in the revival of spring, in the constant resurrec- 
tion of human life, and in the immortality of our ideals. 

Eastertime is not at all exclusively a Christian 
festival; Eastertime is a festival of natural religion. 
Its very name is pagan, for Ostara was the goddess of 
the returning light ; and light brings life. She was the 
Aurora, the Eos, of the Germans, the deity of the 
morning dawn in the East ; and the ^g^ was the holy 
symbol that represented her mysterious powers. 

An egg is a wonderful thing; it has been the object 



152 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

of repeated investigations by our greatest naturalists; 
and our profoundest philosophers have pondered over 
the revelations of its marvelous secrets. The egg rep- 
resents the potentialities of life. Mere v^^armth is 
needed to change the apparently homogeneous and 
insensible yolk into a most complicated animal en- 
dowed with a certain degree of intelligence. The 
egg represents, as we now know, the actual mem- 
ories of chicken-life up to date. Its memories are 
not conscious memories, but the preservations of 
certain structures in living matter. They are motions 
of a certain form, which under favorable conditions 
and proper temperature will repeat all those motions, 
those vital activities, which its innumerable ancestors 
went through in uncounted ages past. 

How wonderful are the secrets of form, and, in 
spite of the complex applications of which the laws 
of form admit, how simple is the basic idea that ex- 
plains their mysteries ! The artillerist, who aims his 
cannon, knows that a hair-breadth's difference in the 
angle of elevation will give another course to the mis- 
sile ; the curve of its motion will be changed with the 
variation of its determining factors. 

The egg contains the determining and formative 
factors of certain motions of living substance, not 
otherwise than three points represent the potentiality 
of a special kind of curve. The determining factors 
of the ^^g have, in their turn, been determined by the 
parental activities of its predecessors ; and thus the 
^g% becomes a symbol of resurrection. 

Life is not extinct with the dissolution of individ- 
ual existence, for even the individual features are pre- 
served in coming generations. And, if this be true 
in the chicken, how much more is it true in man. 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 153 

Man's intellectual life has still other channels to be 
preserved in and transmitted to the souls of other 
men. These channels are human speech. The 
spoken word, and perhaps more so, the written or 
printed word, make it possible for the valuable 
thoughts of great thinkers and the enthusiastic as- 
pirations of poets to live among us as if their authors 
had never died. Indeed, they have not died, they 
live still. Their souls are, and will remain, active 
presences in mankind to shape the destinies, and to 
guide the future development of our race. 

Whether any given one of the heroes of mankind 
rose bodily from the dead or not, especially whether 
Christ rose bodily from the dead or not, is quite in- 
different for the truth of the constant resurrection 
which, as science teaches, continuously takes place in 
nature and in the evolution of humanity. Let us 
not say, because there is no truth in the fables of re- 
ligious mythology, that there is no resurrection what- 
ever. Let us not say that we do not care for such a re- 
surrection as can be observed around us in nature, and 
as can be experienced in human soul life ; that unless 
we rise as bodiless spirits, as taught by supernatural- 
istic religions, we do not care for any resurrection in 
which the continuity of our individual consciousness 
is interrupted. Let us not speak like spoiled children, 
who want their caprices fulfilled, and if they cannot 
have their whims satisfied, want nothing at all. Let 
us rather become familiar with the real facts of life, 
and we shall learn that truth is grander than fiction, 
and real nature is better than an imaginary super- 
nature. 

We are told by men that aspire to be radical free- 
thinkers, that this conception of immortality is a re- 



154 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

vival of old superstitions. What a strange miscon- 
ception ! Man will die, they say, and if man is dead, 
all is over with him; death is an absolute finality; 
and no one, so they maintain, will care for any other 
than a personal immortality, in which the continuity 
of consciousness is preserved. 

Men of this class are not familiar with the facts of 
life. Not only is it true that life continues after the 
death of the individual, and that the work of every 
individual continues as one of the factors in the for- 
mation of the destinies of future generations, but also 
the care for what will be the state of things after our 
death is a most important motive in all our actions. 
We do care for what will take place after our death. 
We do care for the fates of our children, of our nation, 
of our country, of our ideals and hopes, and how our 
soul life will affect the future development of man- 
kind. We do care for such a continuance after death, 
we do care for an immortality of ourselves, even if 
the continuity of our consciousness be broken. The 
fact that we care for such things is the basis of ethics ; 
it makes of man a moral being. This is the motive 
that compels even those who do not believe in per- 
sonal immortality, to sacrifice their lives for their be- 
loved ones, for their convictions, and for their ideals. 

Let us celebrate Eastertime as one of the most 
prominent festivals of natural religion. It is the feast 
of resurrection, it proclaims the immortality of life, 
and preaches the moral command, not to live for this 
limited life of our individual existence only, but to 
aspire to the beyond. Beyond the grave there is 
more life, and it is in our power to form and to 
shape that life for good or for evil. 



THE CONQUEST OF DEATH. 



Jesus Christ said to his disciples : '' In the world 
ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have 
overcome the world ! " 

This is the grandest advantage of religion that it 
comforts him who has religious faith, while he who has 
it not, must tremble in this world of worry, of turmoil, 
of struggle, and of death. 

A scientist who had pondered over many deep 
problems and had been successful in the solution of 
several mysteries of nature, said with suppressed emo- 
tion : '' Religion is a sweet self-delusion that helps us 
to overcome the desolateness of life." 

Why is it a self-delusion? Because, he might have 
answered, the ground upon which religious comfort is 
based, is scientifically untenable; yet is it sweet, be- 
cause religion alone can overcome the vanity of the 
world ; religion alone can fill the emptiness of a perish- 
able fleeting life that seems to consist only of troubles 
and cares, the joys of which, if closely examined, are 
found to be stale and unprofitable. 

The Christians, it may be conceded, delude them- 
selves when believing all the many dogmas of their 
church. But is it a self-delusion, if they have really 
conquered the world, and if they face all the agonies of 
death with equanimity ? Granted that their belief is 
wrong, we often observe their moral courage to be of 
the right kind. They prove by their example that 



156 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE 

death can be conquered, that we can raise ourselves 
above the narrow sphere of selfishness and lead a 
life that is inspired by the religious ideal of a victory 
over death. 

I confess that I am not a believer in the current 
doctrines of the Christian churches, but at the same 
time I openly declare, that I am a believer in Religion. 
I have no theological creed to which I adhere, I know 
of no confession of faith which I would adopt, but I 
have a faith, that man, without any act of self delu- 
sion, can overcome the desolateness of life ; he can fill 
the emptiness of existence with imperishable treasures 
— with those treasures that are laid up in the spiritual 
empire of human aspirations, where neither moth nor 
lUit doth corrupt, and where thieves (3o not break 
through nor steal. 1 have a faith, that man can conquer 
death and can build an ideal life of spiritual loftiness 
upon the material existence of his being. 

This faith is that of the mustard-seed. This faith 
does not look behind as do all the creeds ; this faith 
looks forward. This faith does not anxiously cleave 
to the past ; as do all the dogmatic confessions of faith. 
The right kind of faith, the only faith which deserves 
that beautiful name, clings to the future. The mustard 
is indeed the least of all seeds, but when it is grown, 
it is the greatest among herbs and becometh a tree ; 
so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the 
branches thereof. 

Religion therefore, as I understand it, is no for- 
mula of confession, it is a moral act, it is the soaring 
above the lower life of animal nature. And religious 
faith is not a belief in something that has happened 
two thousand years ago : it is neither the acceptance 
nor rejection of the story of David's son born of a vir- 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 157 

gin, the pathetical story of the heroic martyr who died 
at the cross and is believed to have risen from the 
grave bodily. Religious faith is the confidence that 
we can do our duty, that we can gain the victory of 
spirit over matter, and that we can achieve the con- 
quest of death. 

It is death that makes it necessary for man to have 
religion. If there were no death in the world, we 
would not be in need of religion. But death, the 
stern messenger of eternal peace, awaits every one of 
us. If death did not exist, we might as well think 
that man is born to live happily and enjoy as much as 
possible the pleasures of life. But there is the pale 
phantom that hovers over us day and night. We know 
not when it will call us to the silent rest in the grave, 
but we do know that it will call and take us away from 
the circle of our family and friends, away from the 
field of our activity and labors. 

There are some men who live like animals from 
day to day without giving a thought to death and with- 
out care of what may come after them. That is no 
life worthy of a human being. They do not fear death, 
it is true, but not because they have conquered death. 
Like the brute they do not fear it — like dumb cattle 
that are driven to the shambles without knowledge, 
without a consideration of their fate. 

Life is a serious duty ; and the experiences of life 
should teach us to number our days, that we may ap- 
ply our hearts unto wisdom. 

If you ask me what Religion is, I say : Religion is 
the creation of a higher life and the laying up of im- 
perishable treasures. Religion is the conquest of 
death. 



THE PRICE OF ETERNAL YOUTH. 



An unnecessary dread of death prevails among 
mankind, a dread which is due only to a morbid imagi- 
nation. Men who are not afraid to suffer pain, are 
sometimes found to shrink from the mere idea of haz- 
arding their lives. It is not the agonies of death of 
which they are afraid, nor is it the state after death, 
the eternal rest of being dead, which appears appall- 
ing, but it is the moment of dying, — that it is which 
they dread most. It is the passage from life to death, 
the passage through that gate, 

" Which every man would fain go slinking by— 
Where fancy doth herself to self-born pangs compel, 
Around whose narrow mouth flame all the fires of hell." 

This dread is unnecessary ; it is founded upon 
wrong ideas of death ; it is based on errors that can 
and must be dispelled. 

We learned in school that the old physicists believed 
in a horror vacui and explained from it certain natural 
processes. This horror vacui, as we now know, is an 
error, just as miich as the dread of death. 

It is a fact that dying persons are, as a rule, under 
the impression that they have passed through a crisis 
for improvement, for the agony is overcome and pain 
has ceased. The feeling is due to a blunting of our 
sensory nerves and organs, and must be compared to 
the pleasant sensation which a fatigued person enjoys 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 159 

when quietly falling asleep. In sleep the sense-im- 
pressions become gradually dulled and sweet visions 
of dreams rise before our mental eye, until the light 
slumber passes into a profound sleep where all con- 
sciousness ceases. There is no more reason for the 
dread of death than for horror at lying down to sleep. 

A sage of antiquity said: "Why should we fear 
death? Death is not here, so long as we are here. 
And if death is here, we are no longer." 

We must meet death in the sense that the Stoic 
philosopher on the throne prepared himself to accept 
all the gifts of nature. He said : ''Everything harmo- 
nizes with me which is harmonious to thee, O Cosmos. 
Nothing for me is too early nor too late which is in due 
time for thee. Everything is fruit to me which thy 
seasons bring, O Nature. From thee are all things, in 
thee are all things, to thee all things return." 

Death is a natural phenomenon not less than birth ; 
and the agonies of death are generally less painful than 
the throes of birth. The problem of death is closely in- 
terwoven with the problem of birth, so that you can- 
not disentangle the one without unraveling the other. 

Birth is, as our scientists teach, the growth of an 
individual beyond its individuality. It is the nature of 
living beings to live and to grow. The lowest kind of 
animals do not die ; they grow and divide and thus 
they multiply. The amoeba may die from violence, it 
can be crushed to death by your foot; it may starve 
from lack of food ; but it knows no natural death. 
The animalcules which you can observe to-day are the 
very same creatures that lived millenniums ago, long 
before man appeared upon earth. Immortality is their 
natural state. 

How did it happen that death came into the world 



i6o HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

of life, into the realm of immortality? Is death the 
meed of sin that is due to a violation of nature's laws ? 
Or if it is a natural process, pray what is it ? 

Death came into the world as the brother of birth, 
and death became necessary when birth with its re- 
juvenescent power lifted organic life one step higher 
in its evolutionary career, so as to allow a constantly 
renewed progress, so as to create innumerable fresh 
beginnings and to give new starts to life, new pos- 
sibilities to the development of life. 

Birth is growth beyond the limit of individuality. 
Thus the creature born is the very same creature as 
its mother and its father, just as much as the two amce- 
bas are the very same substance the mother amoeba 
was before her division. But the creature born has 
one great advantage over its parents. It can com- 
mence life over again. It is identical with its parents, 
but it is its parents in a state so little fixed and formed, 
so young, so unimpaired, so pure, like the fresh dew 
that glitters in the morning-sun, that it can make a 
new start, it can travel new paths and can climb to 
higher planes, which seemed inaccessible to its an- 
cestors. 

Not only men but all creatures are naturally one- 
sided ; they develop to be one-sided through their 
occupations and their experiences, and become more 
and more so the longer they live. What can life wish 
for better, than to be allowed to drop again and again the 
fresh prejudices constantly acquired, which we even 
admit may be justified in the men that hold them. But 
we know that the}^ would become injurious if mankind 
clung to them forever. It is for the best of humanity, that 
it can drop the errors which are perhaps, as we freely 
grant, partial truths. Humanity must gain not only 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. i6i 

renewed vigor, but also virginity in life and in love, 
in hopes, and in ideal aspirations. 

This is done through the introduction of birth into 
the empire of life. And this makes it possible that life 
is always young, that it is virgin-like, and endowed 
with renewed courage as well as interest. 

Is the boon of a constant rejuvenescence of the race 
through birth bought too dearly by the surrender of 
our individual existence to death ? Certainly not, if 
the good features of individuals can be transmitted to 
their descendants, if their death is only a partial ob- 
literation of life, where it has lost the capacity of 
progressive endeavor, where impartiality of judgment 
is gone, so that we no longer can see the light 
when a new morn dawns with greater and higher pos- 
sibilities. 

Nature does not intend to ossify life, it makes life 
plastic, and in order to preserve the plasticity, the 
vigor, and virginity of life, nature endowed life not 
only with immortality that through the act of birth 
makes life extend and grow beyond the limit of indi- 
vidual existence, but at the same time it bestowed upon 
it, through the same means of birth, that wonderful 
desirable gift, eternal youth, without which immor- 
tality would become an unbearable burden. 

What would life be, what would immortality mean, 
if it were not identical with eternal youth ? If human- 
ity must buy eternal youth at the cost of death — at the 
cost of the death of individuals, it is certainly not 
bought too dearly. 

Death then is a necessity ; but serious though the 
idea of death must make our thoughts, it is not terrible ; 
awful though it may be, it must not overawe us. Death 
is like the northern sunset. The evening twilight in- 



i62 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

dicates the rise of a new morn. The nocturnal dark- 
ness of the end of life is the harbinger of a new day, 
clothed in eternal youth. So closely interwoven is 
death with immortality ! 

The lesson that death teaches let me express in the 
words of our poet : 

" So live that when thy summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan that moves 
To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
Thou go not, like the quarry slave at night 
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." 



RELIGION AND IMMORTALITY. 



Johannes Scherr, one of the most zealous of in- 
fidels, who used all his great historical scholarship 
and philosophical acumen to forge fatal shafts to hurl 
at religion, says in one of his lucid sketches : 

Religion is a groping from the Temporal into the Eternal ; a 
pathfinding from the Finite into the Infinite ; a bridge-spanning 
from the Sensible to the Supersensible. If we follow — and I speak 
now only of men who have the material and the courage to think 
logically — if we follow. I say, this idle worry and contention to its 
deepest root within us, we shall find it to mean this : terror at the 
thought of inevitable dissolution, abhorrence of imagined .void, 
dread of death. Man yesrns for existence beyond the bounds that 
are set to his life. The happy man, that he may further enjoy in 
a kingdom to come the comforts he possessed on earth. The un- 
happy one, that he may find in the land " above" the fortune he 
was robbed of "below." And the ideal enthusiast, that he may 
at last arrive at those ' ' regions bright, " where "pure forms dwell " 
— the prototypes of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Only 
men who through and through are men, who, in the beautiful words 
of Lucretius, have advanced to the point where they are able pacata 
posse omnia mente tueri, can sternly face the inexorable thought 
of the annihilation of the Ego and the Self, and, when the last hour 
is come, say with stoic resignation in the words of Manfred, 
" Earth, take these atoms ! " The others, the millions and hundreds 
of millions, all wish to gain "salvation"; which means, to live 
beyond the grave and after dea h. And since it is the fashion of 
man to believe and to hope what he wishes, so do they believe and 
hope that their dear Self is " immortal " and predestined, after cor- 
poreal death, to be promoted to a higher class in the eternal school 
of perfection, or, as the pious in current parlance term it, "to be- 
hold God." 



i64 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

Scherr characterizes religion very well as the dread of 
death, and as a desire to live beyond death. And truly, 
he is right when declaring that with many religion is 
nothing more than the desire to make their dear ego 
immortal. But Scherr is decidedly wrong when he 
looks upon death as a finality. It is not matter alone 
that man consists of, but his form also ; and his hu- 
manity lies not in the clay but in the spirit. In order 
to sustain animal life, it is sufficient to eat and to 
drink ; but to sustain spiritual life, man must be nour- 
ished with thoughts. Our children imbibe their mental 
existence from parents and instructors, and the ideas 
with which they are reared are the very souls of the 
heroes of past ages ; they are the souls of their ancestors 
and the valuable results of the lives of the departed. 

The earth takes part of its atoms again in every 
moment of life, and it is not the atoms that we must 
care for most. Man does not live by bread alone, the 
nourishment of his soul is the word ; and the word 
makes of him a human being. Man's life is not ended 
when all the atoms that shape his body return to the 
dust from which the}^ came. Nature has devised 
means to preserve that which is human and to let the 
soul of man continue even after death. 

I read of late in an historical essay some sen- 
tences to the following purport: 'American freedom 
was not possible but for the determination and strength 
of the Puritan character. The Puritans were not pos- 
sible but for Luther, and Luther was not possible but 
for Paul.' If that is so, and I expect there is no one 
who will dispute it, can it be said that death was a 
finality to Luther or to Paul ? When the earth took 
the atoms of these men, did the earth really take their 
whole being? No, it did not. Their better parts. 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 165 

those elements of their souls which were pure and 
noble, were preserved and will be preserved as long as 
men live upon earth. The ideals which they aspired 
to, the truths which they taught, are immortal. And 
like the torch in the mysteries of Eleusis that passed 
from hand to hand, their soul-life will be handed down 
faithfully from generation to generation. 

The purpose of religion, indeed, is the preserva- 
tion of the soul. The preservation of the soul beyond 
death is no illusion, no chimera of fanatic minds. It is 
a fact of our experience, it is a reality that can be sci- 
entifically proved. Death is no mere dissolution into 
all-existence. Certain features of our soul-life are pre- 
served in their individuality. Copernicus still lives in 
Kepler, and Kepler in Newton ; and to-day Copernicus 
lives in every one of us who has freed himself from 
the error of a geocentric conception of the world. The 
progress of humanity is nothing but an accumulation 
of the most precious treasures we have — it is the 
hoarding up of human souls. 



SPIRITISM AND IMMORTALITY. 



Spiritism must be well distinguished from Spirit- 
ualism, although in popular speech the latter term is 
generally employed for the former. Spiritualism is 
that philosophical view which, in opposition to ma- 
terialism, assumes spirit as the ultimate and universal 
principle from which the phenomena of the world are 
to be explained. Spiritism is the belief in spirits and 
the apparition of spirits. While spiritualism is a 
lofty conception of profound thinkers (such as Berkeley 
and Fichte) who boldly spiritualize the whole uni- 
verse, spiritism, on the contrary, materializes even 
spirit itself and spiritual phenomena. With the spirit- 
ist the spiritual realm has become a world of spirits. 

Spiritism, and the belief in spirits, may often have 
been occasioned either by successful impositions, or 
by mysterious phenomena, which for a length of time 
frustrated all attempts at explanation. But, ulti- 
mately, the origin of spiritism lies deeper; the source 
from which it is nourished, is man's longing for im 
mortality. From the vague hope of life beyond the 
grave, and from the dread of being entirely an- 
nihilated, spiritism draws its strength; and all at- 
tempts at disclosing the deceptions of impostors, and 
at explaining certain marvelous phenomena which 
had been regarded as certain proofs by believers, will 
remain futile, so long as the spirit of man is considered 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 167 

as an entity, existing of itself and inhabiting the body 
during the time of life. The idea of immortality which 
is an exceedingly powerful factor in human emotions, 
must, in this combination, produce the most fantas- 
tical and nondescript errors, which, wherever they 
have been implanted, will take firm root in the human 
mind. Not that the errors possess that strength of 
themselves; they derive it from the truth with which 
they are mingled; and a total annihilation of ourselves 
is so utterly inconceivable, that we feel by an instinctive 
intuition, as it were, the truth of immortality. 

The immortality of the soul is commonly under- 
stood to be the continuance of our conscious ego be- 
yond death in the shape of a spiritual, bodiless being. 
This view rests on the principle that the soul is an en- 
tity which inhabits the body and can exist of itself; 
accordingly the ego is considered as a substance which 
is supposed to be the constant and continuous factor 
behind the transient states of consciousness. 

The immortality of the ego stands and falls with 
the belief in a ghost-soul, and the only scientific evi- 
dence for the existence of a ghost-soul has been the 
supposed unity of consciousness. If our conscious- 
ness were a substance, and if, as a substance, it pos- 
sessed a unity, for instance like that of an atom, the 
ego of our consciousness would perhaps be inde- 
structible. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason teaches 
that the ego, as an entity, is a fiction. We are 
aware of a series of ideas that become conscious in our 
mind. It is these ideas that are constantly present, 
but to consider consciousness as a substance that exists 
apart from its contents of ideas is an illusion, a fal- 
lacy or paralogism of pure reason. Modern investiga- 
tions in physiological psychology show that the ego. 



1 68 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.- 

with its chains of conscious and subconscious states, 
is the product of many factors under very complicated 
conditions. The ego forms a unity, /. e., a unitary 
complex, or a compound system; but, of itself, it is not a 
unit. The Einheitlichkeit of the soul must not be con- 
strued as a rigid and ultimate Einheit. In a similar 
way the French school of experimental psychology, 
foremost among them Th. Ribot and Alfred Binet, 
have proved that the ego is not an entity constituting 
the " cause " of mental phenomena, but, on the contrary, 
that the ego is the " effect " of certain phenomena of 
mental activity. If this ego, as an entity, is an illusion, 
how can it be immortal? If a ghost-soul does not 
exist, how can it continue to exist? If a conscious- 
ness independent of its contents, which are the ideas 
that become conscious in our mind, has no reality, 
how can we attribute to it a permanence in ceternmji? 
Although a ghost-immortality of disembodied 
spirits is impossible, man's existence is not a fleeting 
phenomenon of an ephemeral nature. His soul-life is 
not of yesterday, and does not vanish into nothingness 
to-morrow. His ideas as well as his actions are facts 
that continue to be factors in the future development 
of his race. The life of a single individual is not a 
separate and single event that begins with his birth 
and disappears again at his death. It is the product 
of a long evolution of many thousands of generations. 
Their works and thoughts live in the present genera- 
tion, and our soul-life, our thoughts, accompanied 
with the same kind of feelings, will continue to exist 
in the future. Those who think, who act, and who 
.feel like ourselves, possess our souls,* and in them 
z£/^ shall continue to live and move and have our being. 

* Compare The Open Court, page 396, first column, lines i — 11. 



HOMILIES OF SCIEXCE i6g 

It is objected that, as a rule, people do not care for 
such an immortality; they want the immortality of 
a ghost-soul. This is undoubtedly true, but whether 
they care or not, it does not alter the facts. If people 
do not care for this grander kind of immortality, they 
must be educated to appreciate it. 

A Christian missionary in Greenland told his 
Esquimaux converts much about their future life in 
heaven, and when he was asked whether there would 
be plenty of whales and seals and walruses, and 
whether the redeemed would have enough cod-liver 
oil, he suggested that they would no longer want such 
things. The Esquimaux then turned away and said: 
'' What is the use of your heaven if there are no 
whales, nor seals, nor walruses, and if we can have no 
cod-liver oil. If such things don't exist, and if the 
most glorious joys are not even desirable in heaven, 
we don't care for it at all." 

Similarly among us, those people who believe that 
the soul is a ghost which inhabits the body, do not 
care for any immortality unless it be that of a ghost- 
soul. They do not care for continuing to live in the 
life of mankind, and are satisfied to hover about as 
spirits, communicating with their beloved ones 
through raps and other primitive manifestations. They 
are like the prodigal son, who left his father's house 
and fed upon husks for want of better food. 

All the most marvelous feats of mediums do not 
attain to that wonderful perfection for which our best 
performers in legerdemain are famous. The ingenious 
way in which they present their clever deceits is also 
truly remarkable. The worst thing about spiritism is 
its dearth of ideas. The spirits show in their com- 
munications an extraordinary lack of spirit. If the 



17 o HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

manifestations were as true and undeniable as day- 
light, they would reveal a most pitiable state of spirit- 
life, "sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans — every- 
thing." 

It is impossible to convince a spiritist of his errors 
simply by showing that he has allowed himself to be 
duped — so long as he believes in the immortality of a 
ghost-soul. The idea of immortality is strongly im- 
planted in the human mind, because every living being 
feels that life cannot be annihilated; as Goethe says: 

" F^cin Wesen kann zu nichts zer fallen. 
Das Ew'ge regt sichfort in alien. 
Am Sein erhalte Dich begluckt! 
Das Sein ist ewig; denn Gesetze 
Bewahren die lebend'gen Schcitze 
Aus welchen sich das All geschmiickt.'' 



" No being into naught can fall, 
The eternal liveth in them all. 
In All-Existence take delight, — because 
Existence is eternal; and fixed laws 
Preserve the ever living treasures 
Which thrill the All in glorious measures." 

This consciousness of our indestructibility is so 
direct and immediate that, in a healthy state of exist- 
ence, we feel an eternity of life in every moment, and 
only with the assistance of much contemplative 
thought and earnest reflection can we conceive at all 
the idea of death. Even if this earth, the intellectual 
life of which has found its consummation in mankind, 
should break to pieces and make a further and direct 
continuance of our ideas, our actions, and our soul-life 
impossible, we know that new life will grow from the 
wrecks of our world; that new suns will shine upon 
new planets peopled with new generations, who, like 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 17I 

ourselves, will aspire to the same aims and struggle 
for similar, perhaps even higher, ideals. 

The idea of immortality resting on a true instinct, 
and on the natural conviction of the indestructibility 
of life, cannot be easily blotted out from the human 
mind, even though mixed with errors. And the idea of 
immortality need not be eradicated; we have simply 
to weed out the errors that grow around it by the 
slow and long process of patient education. Those 
who have freed themselves of the old errors that have 
attached to the conception of immortality look smil- 
ingly upon their former views, as the man thinks of 
his having been a child with childlike thoughts. As the 
Apostle says: "When that which is perfect is come, 
then that which is in part shall be done away. When 
I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a 
child, I thought as a child; but when I became a 
man, I put away with childish things." 

The old view of considering our ego as a real en- 
tity is, as the sacred Hindoo religion expresses it 
the veil of Maya that lies upon our eyes. The man 
who recognizes this ego to be a sham has become a 
Buddha, i. e., a knower — one who knows; one from 
whose eyes the veil of Maya has been taken. He no 
longer lives the sham-life of egotistic desires that 
moves in the circle of never satisfied wants, but he 
has entered Nirvana. The annihilation of the ego is 
the condition of a better life, of a broader and higher 
existence. 

This truth, though not fully realized in Buddhism, 
was nevertheless presaged by its great founder, Gaut- 
ama. It has been mixed with pessimistic vagaries 
and monstrosities, but has at the same time afforded 
comfort to millions of people in their troubles and 



172 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

cares and agonies of death. This same truth is the 
basis of the Christian reHgion also, whose founder de- 
mands a surrender of our egotistic desires. Christ 
says: "Whosoever shall loose his life shall preserve it."* 
And this same truth lies at the bottom of all true 
ethics. We must entirely surrender our ego and reg- 
ulate all our actions by a maxim fit to become a uni- 
versal law (as Kant expresses it). By lifting all our 
thoughts and intents to the broader interests of pro- 
moting life and of promoting higher forms of life, we 
cease to be single and separate beings, and become 
the representations of cosmic life, or in biblical terms, 
"The householders of God." 

The surrender of the ego is a destruction of self 
and of selfishness only, but it does not imply, as has 
been assumed by pessimistic teachers and by the 
monks of a world-despising attitude, an annihilation of 
our existence and of life generally. It does not mean 
death, but life; not inactivity, but work; not destruc- 
tion, but immortality. It means life and progress and 
aspiring labor, not in the service of egotistic purposes, 
but for the evolution of existence in higher forms, for 
the development of our race and the realization of the 
ethical ideal. 

All labor for egotistic purposes would be vain, for, 
we shall die, and the purpose for which we have worked 
would be gone. But if we consider ourselves as house- 
holders who stand in the services of a higher purpose 
than ourselves, if we aspire for a further evolution 
of cosmic life: the purpose of our lives will not die 
with us; we shall continue to live in our deeds and 

* The same idea is almost literally (though with the addition of " for my 
sake") repeated over and over again. Luke xvii. 33; Luke ix. 24; Matt. x. 39; 
Matt. xvi. 25; Mark. viii. 35; John xii. 25; John x. 17. 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 173 

thoughts and in those who are inspired by the same 
ideals; as Schiller says: 

" Art thou afraid of death? Thou wishest for being immortal? 
Live as a part of the whole; when thou art gone it remains." 

This view of immortality is not less, not smaller 
and more meager, than .the immortality of a ghost-soul, 
whose very existence is an unwarranted assumption. 
It is more; it is grander and sublimer; although 
those who have the veil of Maya upon their eyes, who 
still believe in that sham-entity of the ego, cannot 
understand and appreciate it. 

Johannes Tauler, of Strassburg, one of the pro- 
found mystic preachers of the beginning of the four- 
teenth century, said: " Wir milsse?! entwerde^i, um Gott 
zu werderi."" * Our ego must be undone in order for us 
to become God. The higher life of immortality will be 
ours; but the price to be paid for it, is a surrender of 
the sham-existence of our ego. 

* Quoted from memory. 



IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 



It appears as though the problem of immortahty 
had to be solved anew by every generation. How often 
has the question ''When a man dies shall he live 
again ?" been answered in the affirmative as well as in 
the negative? But it appears that a final answer has not 
as yet been given. Before the court of science the relig- 
ious answer " Man shall live again !"• is a mere asser- 
tion. It is the expression of a sentiment, and we may 
grant that the sentiment is quite legitimate, it is a strong 
sentiment, and to many people it is the most religious, 
the most sacred sentiment. It is a hoty hope without 
which they cannot live. How deep the roots of this 
sentiment are buried in many souls will be seen from 
the following extract from a letter which I received from 
a well educated gentleman whose life has been spent in 
teaching and who Vv^as devoting the leisure of his old age 
to philosophical studies. Having explained some of his 
scientific doubts concerning the immortality of the soul 
and having rejected at the same time the arguments 
that are generally brought forth against this belief, he 
adds these thrilling words : 

"I am now seventy-four years old, but instead of growing 
more cheerful and assured, the reverse has been the case. Accord- 
ingly my present state of soul is lamentable and pitiful. Whether 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 175 

I shall end my life in distraction and insanity or in confidence in 
myself and God, I cannot say." 

Granted that the behef in immortahty is a legitimate 
sentiment ; it may be a postulate and an indispensable, 
condition of our religious life, yet as long as it remains 
the mere expression of a sentiment, it is one-sided and 
insufficient. 

However, the unbeliever's answer, which so often 
boasts of being the voice of science, is no less one- 
sided. And the denial of immortality is religiously not 
so heterodox as most unbelievers suppose, for it has 
been forestalled in the Biblical sentence of Solomon : 

" I said in my heart concerning the estate of the sons of men 
that God might manifest them," that they might see that they 
themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men 
befalleth beasts ; even one thing befalleth them ; as the one dieth, 
so dieth the other ; yea they have all one breath ; so that a man 
hath no pre-eminence above a beast : for all is vanity. All go unto 
one place ; all are of the dust, and all turn unto dust again." Solo- 
mon in Eccl, 3, 18-20. 

It appears from this quotation that either side of 
the question is quite biblical. 

Goethe says : 

" ' Hast immortality in mind 
Wilt thou thy reasons give? ' 
— The most important reason is 
We can't without it live." 

The belief in immortality is of paramount impor- 
tance because it is a moral motive. It is perhaps the 
most powerful moral motive man has, and it is of great 
importance because if man regulates his life as if he 

* The Hebrew leharam ha Elohiin is more correctly translated in the 
Septuaginta, 07i diaKpivel avrovc 6 i^£oc "that God will distinguish them." 
The sense is : I pondered on the nature of men, whether God distinguishes 
them, but it appears that they are beasts. 



176 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE, 

were immortal, he will survey a larger field than if he 
limits his interests to the narrow span of his own indi- 
vidual life. In other words, the belief in immortality 
is useful ; it induces men to adapt themselves more 
fully to the great social organism of mankind ; it makes 
their life more moral. On this account it has been 
proposed : Let us foster the belief in immortalit}' among 
the masses, although it may be untenable as a scientific 
conception. 

This proposition has been called a pia fraus — a 
name invented for its justification, and the pious fraud 
method has sometimes received more credit than it 
deserves. Is it necessary to add that pious fraud 
should be denounced as immoral and objectionable 
under all circumstances? 

If, however, the belief in immortality is indeed use- 
ful, I maintain that it must contain a truth. A falsity 
may be useful once or twice, or a hundred times, but 
it cannot be useful in the long run, for centuries and 
millenniums. The belief that death is no finality and 
that man shall live again, which so generally prevails 
in all our many churches and religious societies con- 
tains a truth in spite of the apparent and undeniable 
counter-truth that man is " like grass which groweth 
up ; in the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up ; 
in the evening it is cut down and withereth." [Psalm 
xc, 5-6.] 

What is this truth? Has science, especially through 
the discovery of its latest great truth, the doctrine of 
evolution, shed any new light upon the problem? and 
if it has, what is the new conception of immortality as 
it appears from the standpoint of the evolutionist? 

The question of immortality is not beyond the pale 
of science. - It is not only our right to investigate 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 177 

whether man's instinctive longing for a continued ex- 
istence is justified, it is also our duty to attain to clear- 
ness concerning one of the most important and basic 
problems of psychology, and also of ethics. Also of 
ethics! For the immortality idea forms the centre of all 
ethical questions. It affords the strongest motive to 
moral action. Indeed what is morality else but the 
regulation of our actions with an outlook beyond the 
grave, it is a building up not only sufficient to hold for 
our life-time, but for eternity. 



All living beings have a dread of annihilation ; 
everything that exists has a tendency to continue its 
existence ; and it will continue to exist, for there is no 
annihilation. Being can never change into not-being. 
There is annihilation only in the sense of dissolu- 
tion. A certain combination ceases to exist in this form 
because it changes into other forms. Being exists, it 
is eternal, and it cannot be annihilated. Not-being 
does not exist and will never exist. Not-being is a 
non-entity, a mere fancy of our imagination. There 
is no reason whatever for anything that exists to fear 
annihilation. We may dread change, but we need not 
dread annihilation. 

Our dread of losing consciousness is not justified. 
We lose consciousness every night in sleep, and it is 
a most beneficial recreation to us. The boiling water 
may be afraid of being changed into vapor. But its 
fear is groundless ; nature will again change the vapor 
into drops of water. From the surface of our planet 
all organised life may die off. Our solar system may 
crumble away into world dust, but what is that in the 
immeasurable whirl of suns? There are other parts of 



1 78 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

the milky way in which new worlds are forming them- 
selves, and we have sufficient reasons to believe that the 
tide of life ebbs and swells in the whole universe not 
otherwise than autumn and spring change alternately 
in the northern and southern hemisphere on this planet 
of ours, not otherwise than waking and sleeping, ac- 
tivity and rest, day and night change in our lives. The 
single forms of life can be destroyed, but life remains 
eternal ; life is indestructible, it is immortal. 

This truth has been maintained again and again ; 
et many declare that it gives no satisfaction to them 
unless their persons are included in the general law 
of preservation and it is generally supposed that be- 
fore the tribunal of science there seems to be little 
chance for proving the persistence of personality. 

Nevertheless, there is a truth even in the idea of the 
preservation of the individual soul, and we do not hesi- 
tate to say that it is the most important aspect of the 
immortality idea. That the individual features of our 
souls are preserved has been proved by evolution. 
Evolution takes a higher view of life. It considers the 
whole race as one and recognises the continuit}^ of life 
in the different generations. 

Humanity lives and the individual is humanity in- 
corporated in a distinct and special form. Humanity 
continues to live in spite of the bodily deaths of the 
individuals — and truly it continues to live in the dis- 
tinct and special, in the personal and most individual 
forms of the individuals. Bodies pass away, but their 
forms are preserved and their souls are here still. The 
preservation of experience from generation to genera- 
tion, is the condition of intellectual growth. The 
preservation of that which is contained in and consti- 
tutes the very personality of man is the basis of pro- 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. lyg 

gress. In one word the immortality of the soul makes 
its higher evolution possible. 

Evolution teaches a new conception of the soul. It 
destroys the old-fashioned idea of an individual. It 
shows that the birth of an individual so called is not 
a new beginning, but it is only a new start of prior 
life. The baby which is born to-day is a product of 
the sum total of the activity of its ancestors from the 
moment organised life first appeared upon earth. And 
organised life, what else is it but a special form of the 
cosmic life that animates the whole universe? 

What is man's soul but his perceptions and thoughts, 
his desires, his aspirations and his impulses which 
under certain circumstances make him act in a certain 
way. In short, man's soul is the organised totality of 
his ideas and ideals. These ideas and ideals of man 
have been formed in his brain through experience 
which is transmitted from generation to generation, 
and in preserving them we preserve the human soul. 

Man's soul is not the matter of which he consists 
at a certain moment. Man's soul is that particular ac- 
tivity of his which we call his thoughts and motives. 
So far as our brother has the same thoughts and the 
same motives, he has also the same soul ; and since 
the doctrine of evolution has become a truth recog- 
nised by science, we can with a deeper meaning repeat 
the ancient saw of the Hindoo sages, '' Tat tivam asi — 
That art thou." All living creatures are ourselves ; they 
are in possession of souls like ourselves, and the more 
they feel and think and act like ourselves, the more 
have they our souls. 

It is true that from this standpoint our souls are not 
something exclusively our own, they are not, as it 
were our private property. Our souls are in part in- 



i8o HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

herited and in part implanted into us by education. 
The former part consists chiefly of our physical con- 
stitution and general disposition, the latter part em- 
bracing our thoughts and ideals is by far the most im- 
portant one ; it represents the highest and most human 
elements of our souls. 

There is accordingly a truth in the Buddhistic 
doctrine of a pre-existence and migration of souls. 
And this truth holds good for the past as well as for 
the future. Soul is not an essence, but a certain kind 
of activity ; it is a certain form of impulses, on the 
one hand conditioned by innumerable experiences of 
the past — ''inherited memory" it has been called by 
physiologists — and on the other hand conditioning 
in its turn the future. This latter fact, viz. that our 
present soul-life is conditioning the future, it will at 
once be understood, is the most important ethical 
truth. It must be borne in mind when we are about 
to act, that every act of ours continues in its conse- 
quences. The act may be unimportant, and the con- 
sequences may be unimportant too, nevertheless it 
continues with the same necessity as that every cause 
has its effect. 

Death is no finality, and we must not form our rules 
of conduct to accord with the idea that the exit of our 
individual life is the end of all. Says W. K. Clifford 
in his article "The Unseen Universe " : 

" The soldier who rushes on death does not know it as extinc- 
tion ; in thought he lives and marches on with the army, and 
leaves with it his corpse upon the battle field. The martyr can- 
not think of his own end because he lives in the truth he has pro- 
claimed ; with it and with mankind he grows into greatness through 
ever new victories over falsehood and wrong. 

For you, noble and great ones, who have loved and labored 
yourselves not for yourselves but for the universal folk, in your time 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. i8i 

not for your time only but for the coming generations, for you there 
shall be life as broad and far-reaching as your love, for you life- 
giving action to the utmost reach of the great wave whose crest you 
sometimes were! 

The preservation of the special and most individ- 
ual contents of man's personality, the preservation of 
that something in him which he regards as the best 
and most valuable part of him is the strongest motive 
for moral action. Even an unclear idea of the immor- 
tality of the soul is therefore better and truer than the 
flat denial of it. And this is the main reason why the 
churches survived in the struggle for existence against 
those people who looked upon death as an absolute 
finality. The ethics and ethical motives of the churches 
come nearer the truth than the ethics of those who be- 
lieve that the death of the individual ends all of the 
individual, body and soul. 

Here I might rest my case. But I feel that those 
who attach to the belief in immortality the idea of a 
transcendent existence in some kind of heaven, are 
disappointed because I have not as they suppose, 
touched the most vital point of the subject. I grant 
that from their standpoint, I am guilty of this mistake. 
The reason is that I have tried to state the positive 
view of the problem and not its negative aspect. 

Immortality means the continuance of life after 
death ; continuance means a further duration of the 
present state. If you mean by immortality, the soul's 
existence in the shape of a bodiless ghost, you should 
first prove the existence of bodiless ghosts. Our expe- 
rience knows only of souls which are the activity of 
organisms in their awareness of self. You cannot pre- 
serve what you do not have, and you should not worry 



i82 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

about losing something you never possessed ; in fact 
you cannot lose it. If immortality of the soul means 
an existence as pure spirit, this would not be a con- 
tinuance of life after death, but the new creation of an 
entirely different being about the mere possibility of 
whose existence we can form no more a conception than 
about an immaterial world in which there would be no 
display of forces. What is the use of racking our brains 
as to whether an ethereal world can exist and what 
comfort can we derive from a belief in its possibility? 
The old view of '' the resurrection of the body" as 
it has been worded in the apostolic creed, is certainly 
more in agreement with modern science and with the 
doctrine of evolution, than the later belief of a purely 
spiritual immortality. 



Let me add here a few words in answer to the 
anxiety of the old philosopher who finds himself on the 
verge of despair because his hope in an unbroken con- 
tinuance of his consciousness after death somewhere in 
an unknown cloudland finds little or no support in 
science. The scientist, the philosopher, the thinker, 
should never trouble himself about the results to which 
his inquiries lead. A sentimental man who wants his 
preconceived views proved, who hopes for a verifica- 
tion of favorite ideas, is not fit to be a thinker. I do 
not mean to say that sentiment is not right, but that 
sentimentality is wrong. It is not right that sentiment 
should perform the function of thinking. Thinking 
requires courage and faith, it requires faith in truth. 

Truth often appears to destroy our ideals. But 
whenever it does destroy an ideal, it replaces it by 
something greater and better. So certain features of 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 183 

the old immortality idea are untenable before the tri- 
bunal of science ; yet the idea of immortality which is 
taught by science, is surely not less sublime, not less 
grand and elevating than the old one. It teaches us 
not only a general persistence of all that exists, but a 
continuance even of that which constitutes our personal 
individual life. 

In looking around and studying the facts of life, 
we find that we can everywhere improve the state of 
things ; there is no place in the world where there is 
no chance for improvement, for useful work, for pro- 
gress. Yet there is no chance whatever for improving 
the cosmical conditions of the world, the order of the 
universe, or the laws of nature. And truly it is good 
for man that he cannot interfere here, because he could 
never succeed with his improvements. Dominion is 
given to man over the whole creation, but his dominion 
ceases where the divinity of nature, the unchangeable, 
the eternal, the unalterable, of cosmic existence begins. 

If there is a God, it is this something ''that is as it 
is," expressed by Moses in the word ''Jahveh. " Con- 
fidence in God, if it means that we expect Jiim to at- 
tend to that which can be done by ourselves is highly 
immoral, but confidence in God in the sense that the 
unalterable law^s of nature just as they are, are best for 
us and for everything that exists, and that it would 
be mere folly on our part to wish them to be different, 
is a great truth, and belief in it is no superstition ; it 
is true religion, it is the faith of the scientist, of the 
philosopher, of the thinker ; it is our trust in truth. 

The idea of a purely spiritual, a transcendent im- 
mortality would be possible only if the name and being 
of Jahveh, if the revelation of God in the reality of 
nature were either a great sham, a lie on his part, or a 



i84 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

huge error on our part. The view that nature is un- 
real and that outside of this great cosmos of ours ex- 
ists another and purely spiritual world is called dual- 
ism. There are no facts in experience to support dual- 
ism or a dualistic immortality. However, the idea of 
an immanent immortality is based upon facts demon- 
strable by science. It is an undeniable truth — undeni- 
able even by the dualist, who in addition to it believes 
in a purely spiritual immortality somewhere beyond 
the skies. 

Goethe whose view of life was an harmonious and 
consistent monism, expresses his belief in immortality 
in the following lines : 

" No being into naught can fall, 
The eternal liveth in them all. 
In all-existence take delight— because 
Existence is eternal ; and fixed laws 
Preserve the ever living treasures 
Which thrill the All in glorious measures." 



DEATH, LOVE, IMMORTALITY. 



How IS it that our poets so often set into opposi- 
tion the ideas, love and death ? Is there a secret con- 
nection between them ? and if so, can that connection 
be explained ? 

The Hebrew poet in the song of songs, sings : 

" Set me as a seal upon thine heart, 
As a seal upon thine arm : 
For love is strong as death ; 
Jealousy is cruel as the grave ; 
The coals thereof are coals of fire, 
Which hath a most vehement flame. 

" Many waters cannot quench love, 
Neither can the floods drown it ; 

If a man would give all the substance of his house for love 
It would utterly be contemned." 

Love is strong as death, nay it is stronger ; for if 
there is any power that can conquer the grimmest foe 
of man, it is love. Love therefore, as the conqueror 
of death, represents immortality. 

How many foolish conceptions of immortality ob- 
tain among mortals, and how often have they been re- 
futed by the sages of all creeds and of all philosophies ! 
Nevertheless, the belief in immortality is as firmly 
rooted in the souls of men to-day as it ever has been 
in past ages. We. have of late read that beautiful pas- 
sage of the American heretic who rejects all religion, 
who hates Christianity, and is in every respect an un- 



1 86 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

believer. He has no ridicule, no flippant word how- 
ever, 'for immortality ; he says : 

"The idea of immortality, that, like a sea, has ebbed and 
flowed in the human heart, with its countless waves of hope and 
fear beating against the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not 
born of any book, nor of any creed, nor of any religion. It was 
born of human affection, and it will continue to ebb and flow be- 
neath the mists and clouds of doubts and darkness as long as love 
kisses the lips of death. 

' ' I have said a thousand times, and I say again, that we do 
not know, we cannot say, whether death is a wall or a door — the 
beginning, or end, of a day, — the spreading of pinions to soar, or 
the folding forever of wings — the rise or the set of a sun, or an 
endless life, that brings rapture and love to every one." 

What is death? Is it not the destruction of that 
form of ours after it has become unfit for further use ? 
It is maintained by the agnostic orator that we cannot 
know whether it is the rise or the set of a sun. Let 
me answer that to us death appears like tiie set of a 
sun ; but we know that the sun itself never sets.* As 
its light never ceases to shine, so life is immortal. 

What is love but our longing for immortality ? And 
the old man who looks upon his youthful sons and en- 
joys the baby-smiles of his grandchild, — does not a new 
vista of life open to him ? And is not that life that 
beams in the eyes of his children and grandchildren 
his very own life ? Does he not commence a new ca 
reer in every one of them ? Is it mere sentimentality, 
an empty figure of speech if we say that love has con- 
quered death indeed ? Let death have its prey, if we 
but live again, if instead of remaining as we are, small, 
limited, egotistic, we may grow and expand, if new 
chances of commencing life over again are given unto 
us, and if guided by love we can determine ourselves, 

*Cf. Schopenhauer, Parerga und Paralipomena, iiber die Unzerstorbar- 
keit unseres Wesens durch den Tod. 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 1^7 

how we may be improved in future generations ! Let 
death have its prey, if our better selves, our noblest 
thoughts, our highest ideals, our best deeds will live 
in, and have a beneficial effect upon, future genera- 
tions. 

Love is not limited to sexual love. Love is enthu- 
siasm for everything good and great ; love is every 
true and noble idea worth being thought again and 
again, and to be propagated to the most distant gen- 
erations. 

Our body, the visible appearance of our ego, is sure 
to die ; and there is no ground for bewailing it, for 
what is the use of preserving just this combination of 
dust with all its little defects, — a combination whose 
psychical components are a medley of a few true ideas, 
of a few lofty aspirations mixed with errors and preju- 
dices ? Is it worth while to preserve this alloy as it 
is ? O no ! It is a tnousana nmeb more preferable to 
preserve the good, the true, the ideal thoughts only, 
as Nature really does, and let errors as well as preju- 
dices perish as they deserve. 

Immortalit}'' is no fiction, and a craving for immor- 
tality is a natural feeling of the human heart. True 
immortality is not possible by egotism, for there ex- 
ists no such a thing as an immortality of the ego. True 
immortality is realised by love only ; and love is not 
only the affection toward our beloved ones ; love is 
every aspiration for truth, every hope for progress, 
and every enthusiasm for the ideal. Love is the broad- 
ening of our soul beyond the limit of the ego. But it 
is not enlarged egoism either ; love has always some- 
thing of a humanitarian and a universal spirit. It 
thrills our pulses with the life of the All and grants in 
a fleeting moment the bliss of a whole eternity. 



1 88 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

Immortality is not presented to us by some gen- 
erous donor as a gift. It must be gained by our own 
efforts ; by our struggling for it must it be deserved. 
But there is that comfort in it that it can be gained by 
every one who believes in Love. 

In this spirit the German poet says : 

" Out of life there are two roads for every one open : 
To the Ideal the one, th' other will lead unto death. 

Try to escape in freedom as long as you live, on the former. 
Ere on the latter you are doomed to destruction and death." 



FREETHOUGHT, ITS TRUTH AND ITS ERROR. 



By freethought we understand the right of every 
thinker to seek for, to find, and to state the truth him- 
self, and in calling freethought "a. right" we are well 
aware of the fact that as all rights are only the reverse 
of duties, so freethought is at the same time the duty 
of every thinking being to seek for, to find, and to state 
the truth for himself. And this duty, in our concep- 
tion of religion, is also the highest religious duty of 
man. The religion of science, therefore, may also be 
called, in this sense, the religion of freethought. 

Freethought stands in opposition to authoritative 
belief. There have been and there are still religious 
teachers and institutions which maintain that man 
should not seek the truth for himself, because he is, 
as is claimed, unable to find it, and if a man has be- 
come convinced that he has found some truth for 
himself, he must be mistaken and therefore he should 
not be allowed to pronounce it, his errors being in- 
jurious to his fellowmen. 

Man accordingly, because he cannot know, should 
believe, he should trust in what he is told to be the 
truth, he should give himself and his reasoning up to 
the higher authority of the church, ''bringing into 
captivity every thought " (2 Cor. x, 5). Freethought 



igo HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

has risen in revolution to the rehgion of bHnd obe- 
dience, and freethought, although first suppressed by 
ecclesiastical and secular authorities, has come out 
victorious in the end and is now almost generally rec- 
ognised as the cornerstone of progress among all the 
nations which represent civilised humanity. 

Freethought has often been misunderstood. It is 
not only misinterpreted by the adversaries of free- 
thought, but not unfrequently also by those who call 
themselves freethinkers. Freethought does not mean 
that thought is free or should be free, it simply claims 
freedom for the thinker to think undisturbedly and un- 
interfered with for himself. The thought of the thinker 
however is not free and cannot be free, in the sense 
that the thinker can think however he pleases. Free- 
thought, it is true, claims the liberty and the right to 
think for the individual ; but that right being procured, 
the individual can think only by renouncing its indi- 
viduality. We can dream as we please, we can imagine 
that this or that might be so or so just as we like. 
But when we think, we cannot come to a conclusion 
just as we please, we have radically and entirely to 
give up our likes and dislikes in order to arrive at 
what can objectively be proved to be the truth. 

The freethinker who claims not only liberty for 
thought, but also liberty of thought is gravely mis- 
taken. There is no liberty of thought. The mere idea 
<< liberty of thought " is a contradiction, for thought 
is strict obedience to the laws of thought and only by 
strict obedience can we arrive at the truth which is 
always the purpose and final aim of thought. 

The error that there can be liberty of thought has 
led to another erroneous idea which is a misinterpre- 
tation of the principle of tolerance. We certainly 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 191 

' --ar-. 

believe in tolerance, but tolerance means the recogni- 
tion of other people's right to express their opinion. 
It does not mean that any and every opinion is of 
equal value. Tolerance demands that the opinions of 
those who seek the truth should be heard ; they should 
not be put down with violence or treated with con- 
tempt. Yet tolerance does not exclude criticism ; it 
does not and should not abolish the struggle for truth 
among those who believe that they have found the 
truth. For truth is objective and there is but one 
truth. If tolerance is based upon the idea that truth 
is merely subjective, that something may be true to 
me which is not true to you, and that therefore an ob- 
jective conception of the truth is an impossibility, 
tolerance has to be denounced as a superstition. Tol- 
erance in this sense is injurious to progress, for it pre- 
vents the search for truth and leads to the stagnancy 
of indolent indifferentism. 

The expression objectivity of truth must not be 
understood in the sense that truth is an object. Truth 
is not a thing, but a relation. Truth is the congruence 
of our ideas with the reality represented in these ideas. 
If the idea is a correct representation of the reality 
represented so as to form a reliable guidance in our 
deportment toward the reality, it is true. That truth 
can be more or less clear, that it can more or less be 
mingled with errors, that it can be more or less com- 
plete or exhaustive is a matter of course. Truth can- 
not be possessed as objects are possessed so that we 
either have it entire or not at all. Truth is the pro- 
duct of our exertions, it is the result of our search for 
truth, so that, the world of realities with its innumer- 
able relations and unlimited changes being living be- 
fore us, immeasurable, interminable, and eternal, truth 



192 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

can never be complete, never perfect, never absolute 
in the minds of mortal beings. But that proves only 
the greatness of the universe and the grandness of the 
object of our cognition. It is no fault of truth. For 
truth remains truth, it remains objective, and can as 
such serve as a guidance for conduct, even though it 
be incomplete and imperfect. We however are free- 
thinkers and search boldly for a more complete and 
more perfect conception of truth, because we trust in 
truth — in its objectivity, its exclusiveness, its univer- 
sality, and its authority. 

Freethought, if the word is conceived as the right 
and the duty of everybody to think for himself, boldly 
abolishes the slavery of blind obedience, but it does 
not abolish, as is sometimes erroneously supposed, 
any and every authority. On the contrary, its claim 
is based upon authority and can be maintained only 
on the strength of this authority. This authority is 
the objectivity of truth, which involves its uniqueness. 
There is but one truth. All the many different truths 
are but so many parts or aspects of truth ; and al- 
though the different aspects of truth may form con- 
trasts, although we may state them in paradoxical 
formulas, they never can collide so as to enter into a 
real and actual contradiction. Whatever is positively 
contradictory to truth is impossible, for truth is one 
and is always in harmony with itself. Truth is objec- 
tive and the right to think is based upon the confi- 
dence that correct thought which is rigidly obedient 
to the laws of thought, will lead to the cognition of 
truth. 

Freethought accordingly is not the renunciation of 
all authority, it is only the renunciation of human 
authority. It is not the abdication of obedience, it is 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 193 

only the abdication of blind obedience. Freethought 
refuses to recognise special revelations not merely be- 
cause it disbelieves the reports made about these spe- 
cial revelations, not merely because it declares them 
to be doubtful and unreliable. Freethought would 
be weak if it were based on mere negations and dis- 
beliefs, and that freethought which never ventures 
farther than the negations is weak indeed. Free- 
thought refuses to recognise special revelation, be- 
cause it believes in the universal revelation of truth. 
The God of freethought is not a God who contradicts 
himself, who makes exceptions of his will by miracles 
for those who seek after signs. The God of freethought 
is not far from every one of us. We can seek him, if 
haply we might feel after him and find him. For in 
him we live and move and have our being. He ap- 
pears in the realities of nature and of nature's laws, 
and his revelation is not dual ; it is one, it is through- 
out consistent with itself and every one is welcome to 
search for the truth. 

Because God has been conceived as a miracle- 
working magician, and because the ecclesiastical au- 
thorities have again and again maintained that such a 
God alone can be called a God, freethought has been 
driven into the negativism of atheism. But if God is 
conceived as the objective reality in which we live 
and move and have our being, as that power the cog- 
nition of which is truth and conformity to which is 
morality, freethought is by no means either negative 
or atheistic. Freethought is by no means a mere 
negation of belief, it is by no means an overthrow of 
religion, or a reversal of religious authority. Free- 
thought is a strong and potent faith. It is the faith 
in truth. 



194 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE, 



The faith of freethought is as a grain of mustard 
seed, which indeed, is the least of all seeds, but when 
it is grown it is the greatest among herbs, and becom- 
eth a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge 
in the branches thereof. The faith of freethought is 
in the beginning a mere maxim, a hope, an ideal. 
But it is founded on the rock of ages ; it is founded 
upon truth. The faith of freethought is justified. We 
have a right to search for the truth ; yea, we have the 
duty to search for the truth. And why? Because 
truth can be cognised. Truth is not an illusion, not 
a mere subjective fancy, it is founded upon objective 
reality. It is an ideal that can be approached more 
and more, not a mere vision but a realisable actuality. 
It is a path, although a steep path full of thorns, a 
narrow and strait gate and few there are that find 
it. But we must find it for all other paths lead astray. 
And we can find it, and blessed are those who have 
found it, for it alone leads onward and upward \ it 
alone is the way of life, it alone is the road of pro- 
gress. 



THE LIBERAL'S FOLLY 



There was a man in the Fatherland to whom lib- 
erty was dearer than life. He bravely st jod up against 
the Government and against the Church, for both 
proved oppressive, both curtailed the liberties of the 
people. There was no freedom in the Old Country, 
and no hope of ever attaining freedom. So this man 
left his home and the place of his childhood ; he crossed 
the Ocean and came to the Land where the Stars and 
Stripes float in the breeze as an emblem of the new 
ideals that have become actual facts under our western 
skies. 

This man arrived here poor, but he was industri- 
ous, frugal, and intelligent. He worked first as a la- 
borer, then as a mechanic, then as an inventor. He 
earned money and he saved money ; first cents, then 
dollars, then hundreds, and then thousands of dollars. 
After a life of energetic labor he had become one of the 
wealthiest citizens of his adopted country. 

He had children and they were educated according 
to his principles. They should not be suppressed, as 
he had been during childhood ; they were brought up 
in liberty. 

To-day this man is broken-hearted. Part of his 
wealth is gone, through the imprudence and folly of 
his son. Everybody had seen it, but the father had 
not, that his son brought up in liberty had become a 



196 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

scamp, a foolish, rude lout, a boisterous scape-grace. 
The father had enjoyed the pranks of the frolicking 
child ; but he was disappointed when the adult son 
repeated the same pranks in business — not to mention 
other dissipations and follies. 

Who is that man? His name is legion. Look 
around, and you will recognize him at every turn among 
your acquaintances and your business friends. This 
man can almost be considered as the typical Liberal. 
It is not always his immediate son who thus shows the 
folly of his errors; in many cases it is the grandson 
or the child of the grandson. For the virtues of the 
parents remain a blessing to the second and third gen- 
eration. The capital of moral strength is not sud- 
denly exhausted ; yet it dwindles away rapidly. 

The children of men of this stamp sometimes still 
remain in possession of their father's wealth. If not 
laborious and industrious, yet they are shrewd busi- 
ness men, sometimes unscrupulous too; but they have 
mentall}^ and morally degenerated, and in the place of 
the republican simplicity of their grandsire they as- 
sume aristocratic habits. They are ashamed of the 
honesty, the industr}^, and frugality of their ancestors 
and make themselves ridiculous as servile imitators of 
European nobility. 

Let us institute an aristocracy of the mind, and 
of loftiness of aspirations. Rotten is every nobility 
that boasts of wealth. It is a shame that we Ameri- 
cans, '' the brave and the free," are always vaunting 
in the face of foreigners the immeasurable, inexhaus- 
tible riches of our country. It is a poor country where 
that is the best to be gloried about, and it is a poor 
man whose riches are everything of value that he pos- 
sesses. Let us cease to admire the rich because they are 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 197 

rich ; and ye, the moneyed aristocracy, cease to pride 
yourself upon your possessions. The pride of wealth is 
the lowest kind of pride, the meanest, the poorest ! 

But ye liberals, beware that ye are not under the 
same curse as the typical liberal. Ye liberals have a 
great mission, for ye are the salt of the earth : but 
if the salt has lost his savor, wherewith shall it be 
salted ? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be 
cast out and to be trodden under foot of men. 

Liberty is a great thing and we should give, if need 
be, our lives for liberty. But liberty must be deserved ; 
it must be the fruit of our labor. Do not be deceived 
by the false prophets who preach in high-sounding 
words, who promise happiness and enjoyment, and 
then decoy you into the abysses of the pleasures of the 
world. They come to you in sheep's clothing, bat in- 
wardly they are ravening wolves ; they tell you that 
liberty enlightens the world. Do not be deceived, for 
it is just the reverse. Liberty does not bring enlight- 
enment, but enlightenment brings liberty ; and there 
is no liberty which is not based on eixlightment, on 
education, on culture, on morality, on wisdom, and 
good will. 

The impoverished immigrant is the fool of whom the 
gospel speaks. His ground had brought forth plenti- 
fully, and bethought within himself, saying. What shall 
I do, because I have no room where to bestow my 
fruits? and he said, This will I do : I will pull down 
my barns, and build greater ; and there will I bestow 
all my fruits and my goods, and I will say unto my 
soul, Soul thou hast much goods laid up for many 
years ; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. 
But God said unto him, 'Thou fool, this night thy soul 
shall be required of thee, then whose shall those things 



igS HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

be, which thou hast provided ? So is he that layeth up 
treasures for himself, and is not rich toward God. 
For a man's hfe consisteth not in the abundance of the 
things which he possesseth, but in the abundance and 
purity of his soul. 

The rich man was a fool because over the cares for 
worldly goods he forgot the one thing that is needed. 
He neglected his soul ; and his soul was taken from 
him. 

The man to whom liberty was dearer than life neg- 
lected his soul and he neglected to build up the souls 
of his children. Thus they degenerated and involved 
their old father in their own ruin. 

You liberals call yourselves free-thinkers and you rail 
from the platform at the churches and at religion. Ye 
blind guides ! Why behold ye the mote that is in 
your brother's eye, but perceive not the beam that is 
in your own eye ? Either, how can you say to your 
brother, Brother let me pull out the mote that is in 
thine eye, when you yourself behold not the beam that 
is in your own eye? Ye hypocrites, cast out first the 
beam of your own eye and then shall you see clearly 
to pull out the mote of your brother's eye. 

How insignificant is the mote in the eye of an or- 
thodox clergyman who when teaching morality cannot 
as yet dispense with the traditional fairy tales, in com- 
parison to the scoffer who rejects any and every au- 
thority, for fear lest it may enslave the mind. 

It is true that our churches and the dogmatic tenets 
of the churches are full of errors, and religion as gen- 
erally taught, is defaced with superstitions. But the 
freethinker who casts away religion is like the bear of 
the hermit. To drive away the fly on the face of his 
master, he crushes his head and kills him. 



HOMILIES OF SCIE.VCE. 199 

You hate oppression and yet you make your children 
slaves of their follies. You love liberty but you shut 
the door to that enlightenment without which liberty 
is impossible. The Churches with all their errors are 
by far superior to the wiseacre who destroys only, but 
does not build ! 

It is not the churches you should oppose, but the 
errors of the churches ; it is not religion you should 
destroy, but the superstitions of religion ! If you un- 
dermine the basis of ethics in the name of Liberty, then 
you are the salt that has lost its savor. 

The churches have repeatedly refused to be the 
leaders of humanity. Whereat liberal thought was 
called upon to shape the future destinies of man. Ye 
men of a liberal mind and of progressive views, ye are 
now expected to be the masterbuilders, to lay the 
foundation. But it appears that on you the word will 
be fulfilled again. Many are called, but few chosen. 
The many have again rejected the only foundation 
upon which the temple of humanity can be raised. 

Our people will pay dearly for the errors committed 
by the blind guides. The cornerstone of man's wel- 
fare is religion, and if man will live, he must take care 
of his soul. Tear down religion, neglect the most pre- 
cious treasures that are entrusted to you, the souls of 
yourselves und your children, and you will reap the 
destruction which you deserve. The masses of our na- 
tion seem to be blind to the truth. They follow the false 
prophets. But let us not despair, for in the end our 
people will bethink themselves of the right path. Then 
religion shall be raised up again and the rents therein 
shall be closed. Then the prophetic word will come 
true again : The stone which the builders rejected, the 
same is to become the head of the corner ! 



THE MOTE AND THE BEAM. 



The duty of the church and of all religious con- 
gregations is to preach morals. Religion should be 
man's guiding star through life. Religion, therefore, 
must give in great and plain outlines a conception of 
the world in which we live, and teach us how to reg- 
ulate our conduct in agreement with the facts of life, 
for the benefit of ourselves and our family, oqr nation 
and humanity. If the church ceases to preach morals, 
or if it preaches wrong morals, its influence becomes 
injurious to the members of its congregation and 
dangerous to society. 

As a matter of fact we must acknowledge that the 
churches have done much in preaching morals ; they 
have accomplished great things in preserving commu- 
nities and making our men and women strong in en- 
during the tribulations of life and resisting its many 
allurements. Let us take one example only which brings 
home to us the wholesome influence of religion. Let 
us read a description of the Puritans as they are 
characterized by an impartial historian : 

''The Puritan was made up of two different men, 
the one all penitence, gratitude, passion ; the other 
proud, calm, inflexible. He prostrated himself in the 
dust before his Maker. But he set his foot on the 
neck of his king. In his devotional retirement, he 
prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was 



HOMILIES OF SCIEXCE. 201 

half maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. When 
he took his seat in the council, or girt on his sword for 
war, these tempestuous workings of the soul had left 
HD perceptible trace behind them. But those had 
little reason to laugh who encountered him in the 
hall of debate or in the field of battle. These fanatics 
brought to civil and military affairs a coolness of 
judgment and an immutability of purpose which some 
writers have thought inconsistent with their religious 
zeal, but which were in fact the necessary effects of it. 
The intensity of their feelings on one subject made 
them tranquil on every other. One overpowering 
sentiment had subjected to itself pity and hatred, am- 
bition and fear. Death had lost its terrors and pleasure 
its charms. Enthusiasm had made them stoics, had 
cleared their mind from every passion and prejudice, 
and raised them above the influence of danger and 
corruption." 

The virtues of the Puritans, it cannot be disputed, 
preserved them in the calamities that had been vis- 
ited upon them in their old country ; they pointed 
out to them the way to their new home, and when they 
arrived in the Mayflower on the shores of the new 
world, it was these virtues again that made their en- 
terprise successful. Many of the pilgrims died of cold 
and hunger ; yet the little colony of emigrants did not 
despair, and finally they triumphed in spite of every 
adversity. The virtues which preserved them, which 
were the cause of their final success, what were they 
but religious ? 

Compare the history of the pilgrims to the fate of 
those noblemen who landed in Virginia under Captain 
Newport in 1607. Why was their enterprise a failure ? 
Because they lacked the energy and endurance, the 



202 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

patience and self-possession of the Puritans. They 
had no religion to teach them these virtues, and they 
came over in the hope of becoming rich without work. 
They expected pleasures and found innumerable hard- 
ships. They sought happiness and were soon con- 
fronted with dangers and disasters which they had 
neither the courage nor the strength to resist or to 
overcome. 

Why is it that among all the colonies planted on 
our shores the most flourishing were those founded by 
religious exiles ? 

Religion is a great power, and the religious instinct 
will do great work, be it for good or for evil. We 
know that the churches made mistakes ; we know that, 
through persecution, they induced people to commit 
most heinous crimes, that they opposed, and oppose 
still, the progress of science. And since they suffer 
our conception of the world and life to become dis- 
torted, their moral preaching is in danger of leading 
astray. We object to their oppression and protest 
against the fetters with which they shackle our minds 
and endeavor to tie us down to certain traditional 
errors which they regard with reverence. 

The most violent assailants of the churches are 
certain freethinkers who declare that all religion is su- 
perstition and that religion must be killed like a wild 
beast, a turbulent hyena; we must rid ourselves of 
religion as if it were obnoxious vermin or a lingering 
disease. These freethinkers, as a rule, look upon 
clergymen as imposters and hypocrites and are in their 
turn by faithful believers regarded in a similar and not a 
more favorable light. Most of these freethinkers are as 
honest as their adversaries, yet, like them, they are 
one-sided. They step forth and say to the people : 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 203 

''Why do you allow yourself to be imposed upon by 
religion ? Religion is an invention of kings and priests 
to keep the masses of the people in subjection. Re- 
ligion is a humbug and the rules prescribed by re- 
ligion need not be followed. Live as you please and 
take out of life whatever pleasures you can get. That 
is the sum and extract of all philosophy." 

The narrow orthodoxy of the churches is the mote 
in the eye of our clergy. How many of our ministers 
feel in duty bound to impress the dogmas of their sect 
upon their congregation and forget the main duty upon 
which all their work should abut, viz., to preach 
morals, to make of the souls that are entrusted to their 
care, characters strong enough to face the adversities 
of life, to endure troubles, and to resist the dangers of 
temptation. Clergymen generally forget that the most 
important moral rule is the love of truth, and truth 
must be judged by scientific evidence, not by its agree- 
ment with, or disagreement from, the tenets of their 
creed. 

Such is the mote in the eye of the church. But the 
beam in the eye of destructive freethinkers is their 
unqualified contempt of religion. They have become 
blind to the importance of morality, and the preach- 
ing of morality. Not as if they were immoral them- 
selves, or intended to spread immorality among our 
people, which as they well know would lead us into 
speedy ruin ; but because the beam in their eye, — their 
contempt of all religion, — has made them blind to the 
fact that their own morality is a treasure inherited 
from their religious forefathers, a treasure that will 
soon be wasted in the coming generations of their ir- 
religious descendants. 

Churches have faults, and some of their faults are 



204 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

most grievous. Their dogmas are untenable unless a 
free interpretation be used. Yet their ethics, although 
wrong in some points, is upon the whole right. It is 
the ethics of the churches that kept them alive. It is 
the virtues of religious citizens that make colonies and 
nations thrive. Iconoclasts are right when protesting 
against the faults of the churches, against the false 
pretensions of religious authorities. But they are 
wrong when they attempt to destroy the institutions 
created for, and devoted to, the purpose of preaching 
morals. 

The creed of the pilgrims was wrong in many 
respects ; yet it was right in so far as it made of simple- 
minded men heroes, who could become the fathers of 
a great nation of liberty. The fathers were in their 
way freethinkers also ; but they were constructive free- 
thinkers, not destructive. They found some flaws in 
the religion that was taught them ; yet they did not 
therefore throw away the whole ideal of religious life. 
They effaced the flaw as well as they understood to 
do, and preserved their ideals. 

Life is a school. All of us are given a work to do. 
Among the scholars in the school of life, there are two : 
the orthodox believer and the agnostic nonbeliever. 
The one is plodding quietly along and tries to solve the 
problem given him ; yet he makes mistakes. The other 
does not try to solve the problem, he thinks that the 
problem is insolvable, and seeing some blunders in the 
lesson of his schoolmate, attempts to erase the latter's 
work entirely. It is well that the agnostic should call 
attention to the errors of the orthodox, but the attempt 
to cast away that which is true and good in religion to- 
gether with its errors cannot be recommended. There 
is a mote in the eye of the one, and the other, pre- 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 205 

suming to be the corrector and leader of his comrade, 
is not aware of the beam in his own eye. 

Liberalism will never succeed in conquering the 
orthodoxy of the churches unless it offers something 
better than the ethics of ecclesiasticism. Liberalism 
must teach us morals, and its morals must be better 
than those of the church, its sermons must be based 
upon scientific truth, and must apply to the practical 
issues of life. Liberalism should be positive and con- 
structive, not negative and destructive. It is true that 
it was necessary to destroy the old errors, but now we 
have done with tearing down and we intend to use the 
empty space to build upon it greater and nobler ideals. 

Let liberalism be more than hostility toward anti- 
quated traditions ; let it cease to preach hatred of 
religion ; and liberalism will rise in its grandeur to be 
the religion of mankind. 



SUPERSTITION IN RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 



It is not an uncommon attitude among freethinking 
people to see all the glories of science in its ideal per- 
fection, and to discredit religion with the worst defi- 
ciencies it ever possessed and thus to identify it in 
this contrast as superstition pure and simple. This 
attitude is wrong, yet it is the natural consequence of 
religious dogmatism. A dogmatic believer when com- 
paring science and religion, is apt to recognise the 
evolutionary element in science and to ignore it in 
religion. He knows very well that the present state 
of science is not its aim and end, our present knowl- 
edge is not absolute truth and the full realisation of 
the scientific ideal. Yet he is inclined to consider his 
religion as absolute and as a model of perfection. It 
is not natural that the unbeliever who sees the faulti- 
ness of the present religious conceptions, condemns 
religion itself for the sake of the errors of religious 
people. 

But is not the dogmatic view of religion a plain and 
obvious mistake. Have not the dogmas, in spite of 
all the attempts to make them rigid and immutable, 
changed constantly and are they not even now almost 
visibly changing in all the churches? Religion is as 
little absolute truth as is science. Both evolve and 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 207 

they must evolve, both grow and develop and they 
develop together. A progress of science is always a 
prophesy for a progress of religion. And this evolu- 
tionary power, far from being an evil, is their life. 
Without the faculty of growth science as well as re- 
ligion would be dead. 

During the last few centuries all the sciences have 
been revolutionised by new discoveries, just as our 
civilisation has been modified by the many inventions 
made in all branches of life and labor. It is but nat- 
ural that religion also should be revolutionised and 
based upon other principles than heretofore. This 
will be accomplished whether we champion or oppose 
the new view of religion, for it is the outcome of an 
evolutionary process in the growth and development 
of mankind. 

The fact is well-established and yet little appre- 
ciated that science has just as well its orthodoxy as 
religion. Science in former centuries was just as du- 
alistic as religion. And the history of civilisation is 
the slow process by which man frees himself from su- 
perstition. Superstition is not necessarily a religious 
error. By far the most numerous superstitions are 
scientific superstitions. Superstition is the assump- 
tion of an error as if it were an axiomatic truth ; and 
one of the most important causes of superstition is the 
dualism of former centuries. Those who cherished 
their superstition as absolute truth assumed the name 
orthodox, viz. the men whose view is correct. They 
denounced the heterodox as revolutionists who de- 
stroyed science as well as religion. 

Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and other great scien- 
tists were to the scientists of their era heterodox, just 
as Luther was denounced as a heretic and infidel by 



2o8 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

the church. Socrates was executed because he was 
said to be irreligious, and Christ was crucified for 
blasphemy. 

If to-day a scientist would try to establish a new — 
although correct — explanation of certain natural phe- 
nomena, which appeared to be contrary to the present 
views of his colleagues, it is certain that his theory 
would for a long time be rejected and ridiculed. La 
Marck and Darwin have experienced the truth of this 
fact. Only by great efforts did they and their follow- 
ers overcome the old superstition of the orthodox 
Pharisees of science. 

The superstition of former ages, the erroneous du- 
alism which boasted so much of its infallible ortho- 
doxy, was not only an attribute of the religion of the 
middle ages but also of its philosophy and science. 
It is but a few decades since physiology got rid of the 
dualistic view of a life-principle, or vital power. Even 
to-day our chemists speak of organic and inorganic 
chemistry, as if two different kinds of elements ex- 
isted, the living and the dead. This view and its 
whole terminology are but scientific superstitions. 

It is not the place here to point out why the path 
to truth necessarily leads through errors. Nor can we 
here explain at length how the errors of old — far from 
being absolute errors — were the germs of truth. They 
contained golden grains of truth, and the faithful en- 
quirer winnowed them until the grain was separated 
from the chaff. Thus Copernicus and Kepler were 
guided in their great discoveries by the old supersti 
tious notions of the Pythagorean philosophy. They 
believed a priori in the harmony of the spheres. 

Also another fact can only be hinted at : Humanity 
does not consist of single individuals but forms one 



HOMILIES OF SCIEXCE. 209 

great unity. The single individual is merely the rep- 
resentative of the ideas of his age, which are the re- 
sults of a long process of evolution. This will easily 
explain why certain ages bear a certain uniform 
character. 

There are, no doubt, exceptions. Some men are 
greatly in advance of their times and some lag behind. 
But such exceptions confute our argument as little as 
cases of atavism overthrow the theory of evolution. 

I argued with many different persons upon the 
topics of religion and science, and found that apart 
from a difference of definitions, fundamentally they 
held almost the same opinions. The atheist and the 
monotheist have different definitions of God. The 
former rejects, the latter accepts, the idea of God, but 
de facto both agree much more than they are them- 
selves aware of. The Roman Catholic priest of to-day 
and Robert Ingersoll are more alike in theix philosoph- 
ical VievfS than is generally supposed, but we must 
eliminate the differences of their terminology and 
translate the language of the one into that of the other. 
A free- thinker of to day differs much more from a free- 
thinker of mediaeval times than from an orthodox be- 
liever of to-day ; and a Lutheran clergyman differs in 
the same degree from Luther himself. What Lutheran 
clergyman would throw his inkstand at the devil or 
order a misformed babe to be drowned, because it may 
perhaps be a changeling ? What Calvinist of to-day 
would burn a man who had a peculiar idea of the 
Trinity of God. The shortcomings of religious men 
are not errors of religion ; just as the ignis vitce was 
not an error of science. Errors and superstitions are 
errors of men and of their times, and our own time 
has likewise its full share of them. The scientific and 



2IO HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

the religious spirit is constantly endeavoring to free 
humanity from its many errors. 

Taking this ground, I fail to see why religion should 
be identified with the errors of the past and science 
credited with all the great ideals of the future. Why 
shall not religion just as well as science be freed from 
the shackles of superstition ? Absolute truth never 
existed either in religion or in science. Scientific 
definitions and religious dogmas have changed from 
century to century, but the religious spirit and scien- 
tific spirit remained the same. The scientific spirit is 
characterised by a pure love of truth, and true relig- 
iosity means man's consciousness of being in unity 
with the whole Cosmos — whether it is called the All 
or God, Brahma or Nirvana or even Nought. The 
religious sentiment is a powerful factor in every human 
being. It prompts us to live in accordance with what 
we call ethics, and by it our ethical instincts must be 
explained. The professedly irreligious possess this 
religiosity sometimes stronger than those who profess 
a certain religion. Call it other than religion, if you 
please, but the rose would be a rose with any other 
name. In this sense Schiller said : 

" Which religion I have ? There is none of all you may mention 
That I embrace ; and the cause ? Truly, religion it is ! " 

The religious spirit and the scientific spirit are so 
much in harmony that one cannot exist without the 
other. All the prominent men of science were sin- 
cerely religious-^they were not orthodox ; how could 
they be so narrow-minded if they were to be the rep- 
resentatives of progress ? They were intoxicated, as 
it were, with their zeal for truth. They felt that the 
heart-blood of human progress was throbbing in their 
veins. A greater power than themselves had taken 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 211 

possession of them. They were conscious of working 
and suffering for a great cause, in comparison to which 
their individual loss and anxieties were but fleeting 
trifles. The same can be said of great artists. Such 
sentiment is the true religious spirit of which Goethe 
speaks : 

Wer Wissenschajt zind Kiinst besitzt, 
Der hat aiich Religion : 

Wer aber beide nicht besitzt, 
Der habe Religion. 

The man who science has and art, 
He also has religion. 
But he who is devoid of both, 
He surely needs religion. 

And this leads us to another point. Science is the 
privilege of the few, but religion may be had by the 
masses. Not everybody can be a scientist, but every- 
body can be and should be imbued with the true reli- 
gious sentiment. Religion is not a deep philosophy, 
it does not take the profound learning of a scholar to 
recognise that the individual is but a part of a greater 
whole. Every child can know that ; and every child 
should know it, not by being taught so at school, but 
by seeing its parents act accordingly. 

A true scientist and a great artist conceive that all 
natural phenomena are but so many instances of the 
IIAN KAIEN. Nature is one and the same every- 
where. Science and art are based upon this truth. 
Accordingly, every true scientific man, every great 
artist must eo ipso be possessed of the right religious 
spirit. However, those who cannot intellectually grasp 
this truth, must needs be religious or they will sink 
below the level of the savage and the brute. 

What we want is religion for the masses ; not ortho- 
doxy to make them bow down and worship idols, b it 
a religion that makes the individual feel himself the 



212 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE, 

representative of a higher power, of his community, 
of his nation, of humanity. A nation in which the 
masses are religious in this sense will be truly repub- 
lican, for every citizen will be a representative of the 
sovereignty of the nation — of the sovereignty with alJ 
its prerogatives as well as its obligations. 



THE QUESTIONS OF AGNOSTICISM. 



There are questions that rise unasked ; they ob- 
trude upon the human mind and cannot be banished, 
because they lie in the nature of things. These ques- 
tions so long as they remain unanswered, will cause 
an unrest in our soul, a spiritual thirst that can only 
be quenched by the spiritual waters of life — by truth 
and by a joyous submission to truth ; they will appear 
as a strong and unsatisfied yearning for something 
that will afford help in time of need, and that shall 
bring light when we sit in darkness. 

This dearth of peace of soul has created religion, 
it has created the great cosmic ideal of mankind, the 
idea of God as the Lord who made heaven and earth, 
who will be our keeper and who will preserve our soul. 
This dearth found expression in David's psalm : 

" As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my 
soul for thee, O God. 

" My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God ; when shall I 
coma and appear before God ? 

" My tears have besn my meat day and night, while they con- 
tinually say unto me, ' Where is thy God ? ' " 

Our world-conception has greatly changed since 
David's time, and together with it our religious views 
have been modified. But the same yearning obtains 
for peace and soul ; because according to the nature 
of things the same questions rise again and again, 
sternly demanding to be answered. 



214 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE, 

The same anxiety as in David's psalm pervades 
a communication presented to me some time ago, 
which in accordance v^ith the spirit of our age formu- 
lates the thirst of the soul for a satisfactory solution 
of the eternal problem of life in definite queries. The 
letter is characteristically signed ''Agnostic," and 
reads as follows : 

" Will 30U kindly answer the following questions ? The future 
of religion depends, it seems to me, on the answers given, 
i) Has the universe an ethical purpose or tendency ? 

2) Have we any reason to believe that anything correspond- 
ing to human life, feeling, or intelligence, exists now in other parts 
of the universe, or will come into existence again, after the de- 
struction of the earth ? 

3) Are there any grounds for hope that pain will be dimin- 
ished and pleasure increased, to any great extent, in the future of 
humanity ? 

4) According to the doctrine of Evolution, will not the earth 
and the whole solar system, in the distant future, become, once 
more, a mass of homogeneous vapor, destitute of life, as the term 
' life ' is generally understood ? 

5) If the universe is an infinite machine, which mercilessly 
crushes between i!s cogs, not only the individual, but eventually 
the race, must not the contemplation of the universe awaken feel- 
ings of melancholy and despair in the human heart ? And are not 
such feelings destructive to religion and ethics ? " 

* * * 
This is an age of eager research. Wheresoever we 

look, we find unanswered questions ; and many people 

shrug their shoulders in despair, because they do not 

expect that these questions will ever be answered. 

Such people call themselves agnostics. 

There are three attitudes of agnosticism. There 

is, first, the agnosticism of indifference. This is the 

position of those who do not wish to be bothered 

with questions which they feel incompetent to answer 

and which they generally care nothing about. The 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 215 

agnosticism of indifference is passive ; it is a philoso- 
phy of indolence, which boasts of depth where be- 
cause of its own littleness it has not found bottom. 

The second kind of agnosticism is an agnosticism 
of despair. It is the agnosticism of ''world-pain," 
and has been characterised by Heinrich Heine in the 
following lines : 

" By the sea, by the desolate nocturnal sea, 
Stands a youthful man. 
His breast full of sadness, his head full of doubt. 
And with bitter lips he questions the waves : 

' Oh solve me the riddle of life 1 

The cruel, world-old riddle, 
Concerning which, already many a head hath beea racked. 

Heads in hieroglyphic-hats. 

Heads in turbans and in black caps. 

Periwigged heads, and a thousand other 
Poor, sweating human heads. 
Tell me, what signifies man ? 
Whence does he come ? whither does he go ? 
Who dwells yonder above the golden stars ? ' 

The waves murmur their eternal murmur, 
The winds blow, the clouds flow past. 

Cold and indifferent twinkle the stars. 
And — a fool awaits an answer.* 

There are men of great talents who have grappled 
with the questions of the day, yet have failed to solve 
them. They feel their labors lost and their energy, spent 
in thought, wasted. But because a genius has failed to 
solve a problem, is it really absolutely insolvable? 
And if it is absolutely insolvable, would it not in that 
case be a pseudo-problem ? A pseudo-problem is a 
question which is formulated on a misconception of 
facts ; it is unanswerable because it is misstated. The 
problem of existence is unanswerable perhaps, not be- 
cause the world is out of joint, but because the posi- 
tion of the questioner is wrongly taken. 

The third kind of agnosticism is the agnosticism 

* Translated by Emma Lazarus. 



2i6 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

of science. We might call it with equal appropriate- 
ness either the agnosticism of ignorance or the agnos- 
ticism of wisdom. For it is a wise confession of ig- 
norance. This confession is not made in general terms, 
that science is vanity and that all philosophy is trivial. 
Such general statements have no meaning, except 
that they place the sage and the fool upon the same 
level. The agnosticism of ignorance is the agnosti- 
cism of science. It is an active attitude of agnosticism. 
It states definitely a special ignorance of ours, and 
formulates it in exact terms. 

The statement of such a specified ignorance is 
called a problem, and although it may sometimes be 
extremely difficult to solve a problem, the agnosti- 
cism of science never despairs of a final solution. On 
the contrary, every problem is formed with the out- 
spoken hope that in the end, it will be solved. The 
history of science is a continuous conquest of the 
hydra-like growing heads of the agnosticism of science. 

There are certain questions — viz., the moral ques- 
tions — the nature of which is such as to demand an 
immediate answer. ''What are the rules of conduct ? 
and what are the notions according to which we have 
to form these rules of conduct?" — are questions that 
are urgent. We live and act ; and we cannot wait 
until science has settled all the problems the solution 
of which in this or in that way might influence our 
actions. We have to act as best we can. The notions 
in agreement with which our whole demeanor has to 
be regulated, are called '' religious " ; and it is natural 
that religious ideas through their extraordinary prac- 
tical importance are of an extremely conservative na- 
ture. They are laid down as the most sacred posses- 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 



217 



sion of mankind, the holiest heirloom received from 
our ancestors. This conservatism is natural, but it 
will become dangerous if it prevents the revision of 
religious ideas through the best, and truest, and most 
earnest critique that can be furnished by science. It 
will become detrimental if it produces thoughtlessness, 
and makes a generation accept without critique what- 
ever it has been taught to believe. 

It lies in the very nature of religious problems that 
they must be solved again and again. Every one of 
us has to solve them for himself as best he can. It 
may be stated parenthetically that most religions are 
creeds; but they need not be creeds and the Religion 
which we advocate is the Religion of Science. 

The questions proposed by Agnostic are in their 
nature religious questions, and we answer them very 
briefly as follows : 

i) "Has the Universe an ethical purpose or ten- 
dency ? " 

If this question is to be answered by Yes or No, we 
should say. Yes — the universe has an ethical tendency. 
But it must be borne in mind that this way of putting 
the question is incorrect. We should ask whether the 
universe has any definite tendency, or whether it has 
no definite tendency whatever, without calling its ten- 
dency either moral or immoral. If the universe had 
no definite tendency it would be no universe, no uni- 
tary world, no cosmos, but a jumble of incoherent 
events, a chaos, a labyrinth of heterogeneous things, 
a confusion without rhyme or reason, without law or 
order. Our answer to this first question is, that the 
universe lias a definite tendenc}', and morality means 
agreement with this tendency. 

2) We have reasons to believe that on other plan- 



2i8 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

ets and in other solar systems, there is something cor- 
responding to human Hfe, to feeling, and to intelligence. 
For philosophical considerations teach us, and science 
corroborates it, that the evolution of the human race, 
the feeling of animal life, and the intelligence of ra- 
tional beings have developed with necessity upon 
earth in rigid accordance with natural laws. Is there 
any doubt that the same conditions in other parts of 
the universe will produce the same results, and sim- 
ilar conditions similar results ? When we analyze the 
stars with the assistance of the spectroscope we find 
there the same material elements as upon the earth. 
Can there be any question as to our finding every- 
where the same laws and the same tendency of evolu- 
tion ? Other races on other planets may have very 
different constitutions; winged animals of the air or 
swimming animals of the sea, bipeds or quadrupeds, 
mammals or insects, carnivorous or herbivorous, or 
any other kind of creatures might develop into think- 
ing beings ; yet it is certain that among all rational 
creatures, there would be at least in all fundamental 
features the same logic, the same arithmetic, the same 
mathematics, and above all the same logic of action, 
viz., the same ethics. 

3) There are grounds for hope that pain will be 
diminished in life and that the nobler and more re- 
fined pleasures will be constantly increased. But con- 
sidering that pain is either the result of unsatisfied 
wants or due to some other disturbance in life, we 
must bear in mind that the creation of new wants 
which arises through progress, will produce new pains 
to the same degree as it will produce more refined and 
nobler pleasures. 

Are we not sometimes too weak-hearted with re- 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 2ig 

gard to our pains? Are not the causes of our woes 
mostly of a trivial nature ? Look at them from a higher 
standpoint and they appear like the baby's tears over 
a broken doll. And if they are not trivial, if they are 
not the woes of the individual, but of the aspiring 
race, are they not far from being merely lamentable ? 
Are they not in such a case sublime ? Are they not 
transfigured by their sacred purpose, and must they 
not appear as grand as are the struggles, the anxieties, 
and the sufferings of a hero in a tragedy? 

Let us consider pleasure and pain not from the 
standpoint of sentimentality but from the higher stand- 
point of ethics, where the individual as such disap- 
pears, where the individual's worth is measured ac- 
cording to his breadth of .mind, and where life is valued 
not according to the pleasures it affords, but according 
as it contains more or less of those treasures that 
"neither moth nor rust doth corrupt." 

As to the fourth and fifth question, we should say : 

This planet of ours together with our solar system 
may, and we have indeed reasons to believe that it 
will, break to pieces. Yet the conditions which pro- 
duced not only our solar system, but also mankmd 
and human civilization, will not cease to exist. They 
will continue to exist and will produce, in fact they 
are constantly producing, new worlds out of the 
wrecks of the old broken ones. If a man dies, we la- 
ment the loss ; w^e weep for the friend, the brother or 
the father. But the loss is not so much his ; it is ours. 
If our world breaks to pieces it will be a loss — a la- 
mentable loss. But will it be a loss to mankind ? It 
will be a loss in the universe, which, however, as we 
can fairly suppose, will be made up by other gains. 

The universe is not ''an infinite machine, which 



220 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

mercilessly crushes between its cogs not only the in- 
dividual but eventually the race." The universe is 
infinite and inexhaustible life. Whatever life of or- 
ganized beings, of individuals, of entire races and of 
entire solar systems may disappear in one part, there 
is a probability, practically amounting to certainty, 
that in other parts new life will originate to compen- 
sate for it. 

Life on its highest stage means action and action 
means performance of duty. Man is an ethical animal, 
which means that he has come to understand certain 
important features of the tendency prevailing in the 
universe. It is the performance of duty in past genera- 
tions which has raised mankind to its present emi- 
nence. 

The world is throughout a field of ethical aspira- 
tions. If our life ceases, if our planet breaks to pieces, 
the immutable laws of nature will remain the same. 
Humanity may be wiped out of existence, but those 
realities which created humanity and in consonance 
with which man's ethical ideals have been shaped will 
remain. We read in the New Testament that Heaven 
and earth may pass away, but the word of God abideth 
forever. The Religion of Science recognizes the truth 
of this biblical verse, although it does not accept it in 
the narrow interpretation of theistic theology. 



THE BIBLE AND FREE THOUGHT. 



At present there are two distinct views concerning 
the Bible, viz., that of the so-called orthodox, and that 
of the irreligious radical. Those advocating the former 
view believe that the Bible was revealed by divine in- 
spiration and communicated word for word. They 
declare that it contains nothing but truth, — absolute 
truth. The advocates of the latter view consider it a 
book full of paradoxes and contradictions. They ridi- 
cule it as the 7ion plus ultra of superstition and the 
very basis of bigotry. 

Both parties are in error. The Bible although not 
dictated by the Holy Ghost ve7'batim, is from a human 
and secular standpoint the grandest and sublimest 
book we have. Compare it with the sacred books of 
other nations, with those books which are the old 
store-houses of ethical, religious and mythological 
ideas. Compare it with the Kof^an, with Hesiod's 
Cosmogony, or the Voluspa of the Northern Edda, or 
the Zend-Avesta, or even the Vedas and the Buddha 
Gospels. What impartial judge would not give pre- 
ference to the Bible ? 

Goethe found in the Bible an invaluable store and 
an inexhaustible mine of poetry ; he ranked it far 
above Homer. Read the passage in Humboldt's Kos- 



222 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

7nos, where he expresses his admiration for the He- 
brew literature and more especially the poetry of the 
psalms ! 

The sacred books of all nations, and particularly 
the Bible form the basis of our modern ethics. That 
the Bible should bear traces of the times in which it 
was written, is quite natural. But it also points far 
beyond its time, in that it contains germs which have 
developed into a higher ethical culture. It is this that 
gives to the Bible its value. 

The Bible, when regarded from the standpoint of 
narrow bigotry, becomes a tissue of almost unexplain- 
able absurdities. How many things, which can be ex- 
plained by the ideas and manners prevalent in those 
times, must now appear incongruous. No matter how 
much the irreligious and flippant scoffer may differ 
from the bigot in his ultimate opinion concerning the 
Bible, his view nevertheless coincides with the latter's 
in that they both guage the Bible according to the 
same standard. Both demand proofs of absolute truth : 
and because the infidel does not find them he depre- 
cates it and ridicules the pretensions of believers. 
Both the bigot and the scoffer lack scientific insight. 

If we consider the Bible from the standpoint of the 
severest and most radical criticism, we shall only learn 
to prize it all the more, on account of its poetical 
treasures and on account of the valuable evidence it 
affords of the growth of religious, ethical and philo- 
sophical ideas. 

From this standpoint of careful and earnest scien- 
tific investigation the Bible will be read with the great- 
est pleasure and edification. 

We prize our old legends of fairies and witches, 
heroes and ogres, of the shepherd boy who slays the 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 223 

giant and becomes a king, but we are blind to the 
beauty of the story of David and Goliath. And why 
are we unable to appreciate its charm? Is it not be- 
cause, when we first read it with our teacher, the hu- 
man features of the story were ignored? They were 
purposely thrown aside and something superhuman, 
something awe-inspiring was wrongly substituted ; and 
this made the whole tale unintelligible to the child. 

The Bible if not distorted by narrow-minded bigotry 
is a rich mine for every one. The child's love for 
stories is satisfied, the historian finds records which 
are of the greatest importance for our knowledge of 
the patriarchal era of mankind, its customs and habits, 
its beliefs and superstitions, its laws and its culture. 
And above all, those who want to found their actions 
upon a firm basis of rules and principles, who aspire 
toward religious or ethical ideals, will find the most 
fertile fields in the books of the Bible, if they search 
in the right spirit, prejuduced neither by credulous 
acceptance nor flippant rejection of all their contents. 

The Old Testament is one of the strongest sup- 
ports of free thought, and the words of Christ are so 
full of truth and righteousness that they have rung 
through almost nineteen centuries and have not as yet 
lost their power. They have been wrongly interpreted, 
they have been scoffed at and ridiculed, they have 
been criticised and condemned, but they survived 
nevertheless, and will live on in the ethical develop- 
ment of humanity. The radical freethought of the 
Bible is perhaps not understood by those who say 
" Lord, Lord," who read and worship the letter and 
lose sight of the spirit. 

Mr. Salter, the well known lecturer of the Society 
for Ethical Culture in Chicago, speaks in The Chris- 



224 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

tian Register {]2in. 19, 1888) of the significance of Jesus 
for our time. He says : *' The charm about the name 
of Jesus is that he dared believe in something different 
from what he saw about him. He loved justice in his 
soul, but with his eyes he saw injustice." 

Christ's word, ^' Ye resist not evil," is a lesson to 
the human race which people even to-day have not yet 
understood. We are still prone to obey the old rule : 
''An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." If one 
does injustice to another, this other thinks the best 
remedy is for him in his turn to do another injustice. 
It is almost an unwritten law of our social code "to 
render evil for evil and railing for railing." If the 
monopolist oppresses the workingmeii, the trades- 
unions expect to help themselves by committing a 
similar injustice. We must be educated to ''a per- 
ception," as Wheelbarrow says, ''strong enough to 
see that freedom to oppress others is not freedom." It 
will perhaps take some centuries for society to learn 
that the wrong-doer injures others and himself still 
more. He who seeks revenge by retaliating does not 
right the wrong but aggravates it. He intends to re- 
store justice and increases injustice. 

There are but few who can distinguish between an 
honest fight with their adversary and a hateful perse- 
cution of their enemy. The former is our duty, the 
latter is deplorable, and if done in a cowardly manner 
with the help of lies and slander, it is even despicable. 
So long as we stick to the old rule of rendering evil for 
evil, every evil will beget a new evil. But if we let it 
alone, if we fight our struggles honestly without bear- 
ing any hatred toward our adversary, evil will be ex- 
terminated. 

The real Christian is not he who beheves the mar- 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 225 

vellous stories told in the Bible, but he who acts in 
accordance with the teachings of Christ, which finally 
must be recognised as true in their spirit and humane 
in their nature. They are right and correct and will 
outlast the worldly wisdom of retaliation. They will 
come to be recognised more and more, not only as 
noble and sublime from the ideal point of view, but 
also irovn the lower standpoint of practical prudence. 

We would therefore call the attention of the free- 
thinker and of the bigot to the Bible. The one will 
find in store for him treasures of most radical thought, 
love of justice and truth, which he did not expect, and 
the other will learn that Christ was different from what 
he is generally represented in the orthodox pulpits. 
Our modern ethical civilisation is evolved from the 
biblical teachings and we have not as yet been able 
fully to comprehend all the ideas embodied in them, 
nor to realise them in actual life. Mr. Salter in the 
above quoted article says : " Religion must inspire to 
personal and social reform. That is the only thing 
that is religion in the modern world. All else is the 
tradition of an earlier time, when justice and judgment 
were committed to other hands than man's." .... 
'*We cannot pray for justice any longer. We have 
to do it. We cannot say, Thy kingdom come. We 
have to obey the God who commands us to create it." 

If any one who claims to be a teacher of free thought 
and ethical progress, disdains the prophets in the Old 
Testament, or the Doctrines of Christ in the New 
Testament, if he scoffs at his followers, the Apostles, 
Paul, Augustin or Luther, because they were in many 
respects not so far advanced as we are now, he seems 
to me like an engineer who foolishly prattles about 
the stupidity of Watt and Stephenson or other great 



226 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

inventors because their engines were poor in com 
parison to the engines of to-day. An engineer of such 
stamp will not become an inventor. Due reverence 
for and appreciation of the merits of the past is the 
only foundation on which a truly grand future can be 
built. 

Radicalism is needed in our churches and our clerg> 
should know that free thought — in its best sense — can 
never destroy religion, but on the other hand religion 
is wanted among our freethinkers. They should know 
that true religion is the most radical power of a con- 
sistent free thought which in constant opposition to 
narrow-minded bigotry leads humanity onwards in the 
path of progress. 



FAITH AND DOUBT. 



The value of scepticism was the subject of a dis- 
cussion in a club consisting mainly of scientists, law- 
yers, and business men. And it was a strange fact 
that almost all the speakers glorified scepticism as if 
it had been the cause of all progress, as if the human 
mind reached the climax of perfection in Doubt. 

This attitude, it appears, is based upon an errone- 
ous conception of the function of doubt, and it is now 
so prevalent partly because the terms doubt and scep- 
ticism are often identified with any denial of certain 
religious beliefs, and partly because agnosticism, 
which despairs of a definite solution of the fundamen- 
tal problems of philosophy, is at present the most 
prevalent and fashionable world-conception. 

In the addresses made, it was maintained that all 
success in life was due to doubt. An able business 
man had doubted the propriety of the prevalent meth- 
ods of distribution in the meat-market ; and Charles 
Darwin had doubted the truth of the biblical account 
of creation, andlo ! what were the results ? The former 
created an establishment which made meat cheaper all 
over the world, and the latter wrote ''The Origin of 
the Species" and "The Descent of Man." One of 
the speakers defined doubt as the faith of a man in 
himself and in his ideals, contrasting it with a blind 



228 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

faith in dogmas. But it strikes us that this view of 
doubt and scepticism is, to say the least, misleading. 
Doubt, real doubt, is unable to produce any results. 
The man who has a faith acts according to the faith 
that is in him. But the man who doubts is like Bur- 
idan's donkey who hungers between two bundles of 
hay so long as he remains in the agnostic state of not 
knowing which bundle should be eaten first. 

It was maintained, likewise, that the times of scffep- 
ticism had been the times of progress. This is true 
only if scepticism be identified with active thought. 
Goethe said, that the epochs of strong faith alone had 
been the periods of a strong activity, of progress, of 
creative thought, fertile with ideas and deeds. It is 
not true that Mr. Armour's doubt produced the new 
methods of the distribution of meat, it was his faith in 
the new methods and not his doubts as to the old 
methods that produced progress. The negative ele- 
ment of doubt, important though it may be as a tran- 
sient phase in the growth of our ideas, is not so im- 
portant as the positive element of a new faith for the 
creation of great things. It is most probable that the 
new faith in the truth of the evolution theory devel- 
oped in Darwin's mind long before his old faith had 
broken down, and it is not impossible that for a long 
time he did not even realise the full extent of the con- 
flict between the old and the new faith. Success after 
all is always due to faith ; and doubt is nothing but a 
state of suspense in which a new faith is struggling 
with the old faith, and only lasts so long as both faiths 
are sufficiently equal in strength to paralyse each 
other. 

The aim of doubt is always its annihilation. Prob- 
lems tend to be solved and the end of doubt should 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 229 

be their settlement. But we were told by an encomiast 
of scepticism, that ^'theories and dogmas vanish in a 
clear and keen cut mind before doubt, even as mists 
before the morning sun." However if the old theories 
are not replaced by new and better theories, — better 
because they are truer, — it would seem as if we should 
rather compare the state of doubt to the mist. For if 
we are surrounded with a dense fog we cannot see, 
and only so long as we are in doubt do we answer 
^^Alas ! I know not." 

It is strange that the doubt of this same eulogist 
of scepticism is not at all a state of not knowing. When 
he attempted to explain the actual advantages of 
doubt he became inconsistent with himself. As soon as 
he tried to describe his doubter's ''hope eternal" it was 
noticeable that doubt became simply a wrong name for 
the opposite of doubt. What he calls doubt is actually 
a new faith. His ''doubter mourns not, not as one 
without hope," for he positively knows that "we live 
and die by laws as inevitable, all working toward a 
unity of completion" and "Nature makes no blanks," 
and death has also its place in nature. "It is death 
that weaves a crown for birth and life." 

A new faith is dawning on the intellectual horizon 
of mankind ; and whether the new faith should be 
considered as preferable to the old faith has, to the 
large masses of our people, not as yet been decided. 
Hence the prevalence of doubt. This prevalent state 
of doubt is unquestionably the harbinger of better 
days, it is a sign of progress, it promises life, and 
growth, and evolution. But let us not make doubt 
the aim and end of thought. Our ideal is not the de- 
spair of an eternal scepticism, but the great hope of a 
new, of a better and a truer faith. 



THE HEROES OF FREE THOUGHT. 



Who are the heroes of free thought? Those who 
smile at religious sentiment and think that ''religion is 
good for the masses while the educated naturally stand 
above any religious emotion" — or those who struggle 
and yearn for truth, who suffer for it and advance 
slowly, but earnestly, on the path of human progress? 
The former may be more advanced in refinement, 
knowledge and worldly wisdom, but the latter only are 
the heroes of free thought. Such men were Giordano 
Bruno, Spinoza, Luther, Lessing, Hume, Kant and 
others, and it is noteworthy that almost all of them 
were not only from childhood earnestly pious, but that 
they also came from families where religion was more 
than, the mere observance of ceremonial rites. 

Let us confine ourselves to the best known of such 
characters. David Hume was a Scotchman, whose an- 
cestors were, as are all the old Scotch people, very de- 
voted Puritans. Kant, also, was of such Puritan Scotch 
origin, and we know that his mother was a devout 
Christian. 

Spinoza was a Jew. His parents left their home in 
Spain for Holland, in order to remain faithful to the re- 
ligion of their ancestors. They might have comfortably 
remained in Spain if they had abjured their belief and 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 231 

turned Christians. The religious spirit of Spinoza's 
writings is fully appreciated even by his adversaries, 
and he showed this religious spirit in practical life when, 
for the sake of truth, he scorned the terrible curse of 
the synagogue, in the teachings of which he had been 
educated. 

Luther's faith and love of truth is an historic fact. 
He was a hero of free thought, which his contemporary, 
the great Pope Leo X., was not. Pope Leo was a 
free-thinker of the modern stamp. Luther was a firm 
believer, Leo was an unbeliever. Luther had faith in 
God like a child. Pope Leo was unhampered by any 
credo and at the same time was a protector of art and 
a promoter of humanitarianism. He did much for the 
Renaissance in resuscitating Greek letters and Greek 
culture. He built the glorious Cathedral of Saint Pe- 
ter's at Rome and to show his Helenic spirit he placed 
upon the cross formed by the four great aisles of the 
largest church on earth a cupola resembling the pagan 
Pantheon. In his heart Greek paganism triumphed 
over Christianity. 

Compare this great Maecenas, the free-thinker, the 
humanitarian, the erudite man, with the poor, almost 
illiterate Augustine monk. Would you then have rec- 
ognised the power of free thought in the latter and the 
lack of it in the former? What gave to the simple- 
hearted believer the strength to lead humanity one 
great step onward, so as to gain for every man the 
freedom of his conscience — the Christian's liberty, as 
Luther called it? It was not that he believed less of 
the dogmatic Christianity, but that his religious faith 
was stronger. Pope Leo was indifferent to religion ; 
he was a free-thinker, and, upon receiving the Peter's 
pence, spoke of ''the profitable fable of Christ." He 



232 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE, 

appreciated and understood Luther's opposition so 
little that he thought his preaching against Tetzel's 
sale of indulgences was mere jealousy of the Augus- 
tine monk's against the Dominican Order, to whom 
the sale was entrusted. Leo could not imagine that 
any one would endanger his life for the sake of con- 
viction. 

Luther very probably would have been shocked 
had he foreseen that humanity would advance on the 
path of religious free thought. He did not see so far. 
But it was better for him and better for the cause 
which he boldly defended. We, however, should learn 
from the juxtaposition of those two men, Leo X. in all 
his papal splendor and the poor monk Martin in his 
simple faith, that the heroism of free thought is no 
mere indifferent negation of religious dogmatism, but 
strong faith — religious faith — and confidence in truth. 
Let us boldly and consistently think the truth, let us 
speak the truth modestly but firmly, that is the spirit 
by which the heroes of free thought became a power 
and rose above their time so as to lead humanity to 
higher and nobler aims. 



THE HUNGER AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



There is a most dangerous superstition prevailing 
among great masses of people that morality is a good 
thing as an ideal, but a bad thing for the purposes of 
practical life. A business man who wants to succeed, 
it is imagined, can succeed by immoral means only. 
This is a superstition, for it is not true ; and it is 
a dangerous superstition, for it leads those who 
believe in it and act accordingly, into ruin. Morality, 
if it be true morality, will lead to life, it will preserve, 
it will produce prosperity, and afford a noble satis- 
faction never mingled with regret. 

The deep-rooted error that immorality alone can 
insure success, seems to have originated through a 
strange combination of misconceptions, favored by 
special conditions and strengthened by exceptional 
instances of successful impostors. Our very language 
betrays us into grievous blunders. We speak of a 
''smart " business man and understand by ''smart" 
now the prudent, industrious, judicious merchant, 
and now the sagacious, deceitful trickster. Prudence 
is indispensable to insure success, but trickery is not. 
Trickery will go but a little way and, like the crooked 
boomerang, it will unexpectedly fly back upon its 
originator. 

Closely connected with this vagueness of speech is 
the vagueness of our views of morality. Morality is 



234 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

too often tacitly identified with so-called goodnatured- 
ness and with inability. It is proverbial to speak 
of incompetent men who are free from other gross 
faults as ''good people, but bad musicians"; mean- 
ing thereby that they are morally blameless, yet still 
disqualified for the business or profession in which 
they are engaged. Such men are popularly called 
'good,' i. e., morally good; but they are not good. 
They lack that moral nerve that enables us to adapt 
ourselves to our work ; they lack that moral energy 
of self-discipline by which alone we can train and 
educate ourselves to become competent in our pro- 
fession. 

The negative morality of doing no harm to any- 
body is not as yet morality ; it is, at best, sentimental- 
ity. True morality has positive ideals, and foremost 
among our moral ideals must be the aspiration of 
every individual to become a useful member of so- 
ciety, by contributing something to its weal and wel- 
fare. To do some work which gives us pleasure, 
dilettanteism in art or science, in business or agri- 
culture, etc., is not as yet sufficient; our work must be 
a service to society, it must stand in demand, other- 
wise we cannot and ought not expect any return for it. 

A certain indifference with regard to honesty easily 
arises from an over-prosperous condition of society. 
If men earn money without earnest effort ; if they 
live in plenty, and find the resources of all depart- 
ments of industry practically unlimited, they become 
indulgent towards the depredator who takes more than 
his due, and smile at the thief who nimbly skips away 
with his spoil. He who plunders the public treasury 
is not taken to account, because the loss is not so se- 
riously felt. A country in an unusual state of pros- 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 235 

• 

perity is not so much in need of honesty as a poor 
nation, and accordingly the moral instinct, the moral 
sense of that country remains comparatively unde- 
veloped. If man did not stand in need of intelligence, 
if he could live without thought, he certainly would 
never have developed brains, and humanity would 
still lead an unrational existence. The same is true of 
morality : it is developed among mankind because and 
to the extent in which man wants it. And we do want 
it indeed ; we are most intensely in need of it, for so- 
society could not exist without it. 

A prosperous nation, I say, is not so much in need 
of morality as a poor nation, where the struggle for 
existence is hard and competition is fierce. Yet 
the people that are not at present in such great need 
of morality will soon come to that need. History 
teaches that the moral, the industrious, the patient 
poor people will in time most successfully compete 
with the rich and the opulent. As soon as opulency 
has reached that degree in which the need of morality 
is no longer felt, the decline of a nation sets in. A 
crisis in her social life is impending. The down- 
trodden will complain of their oppressors ; they will 
cry out for justice; and if that justice be not freely 
given, the whole nation will suffer for it, and the coun- 
try once so prosperous will lie deserted and in ruins. 
Let the monuments of the great nations that pros- 
pered before us and passed away be a mene tekel for 
us to-day. 

When the nation of Israel was in a social condition 
similar to that which, to a great extent, prevails among 
us now, the prophet Amos arose and lamented the 
moral depravity of his people. He said : 



236 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

% 
Thus saith the Lord : For three transgressions of Israel, and 
for four, will I not turn away their punishment. For they sell the 
righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes. And per- 
vert the cause of the afflicted. They lay themselves down upon 
pledged garments near every altar ; and drink wine procured by 
fines, in the house of their gods. 

Amos foresaw that such a state of society could not 
remain as it was. He said : 

And I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs 
into lamentation ; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins and 
baldness upon every head ; and I will make it as the mourning of 
an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day. 

The need of morality, its indispensableness for the 
welfare of the nation as well as of every individual, 
must at last be felt, and under the impression of this 
truth the prophet continues : 

Behold the days come, sayeth the Lord Gcd, that I will send 
a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, 
but of hearing the words of the Lord. 

Amos's prophecy is as true to-day — and we repeat 
it in this conviction — as it was about two and a half 
millenniums ago. There will come upon us disorder 
and misery, our feasts will be turned into mourning 
unless we are made aware of the want of honesty, of 
justice, of morality. The expression ''the words of 
the Lord " in the prophecy does not signify belief in 
a supernatural revelation ; and if it did, we do not quote 
it in that sense. "The words of the Lord," as we in- 
terpret the term in accordance with its context, mean 
the moral commands that will forever remain the sub- 
stance of religious aspirations. There will arise, as 
Christ said, almost two thousand years ago, ''a hunger 
and thirst after righteousness." Those who feel that 
hunger will partake of the blessing that in the nature 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 237 

of things is intimately connected with it, that will fol- 
low upon it, as the effect follows upon its cause. 
Says Amos : 

For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel 
among the nations ; like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not 
the least grain fall upon the earth. 

The prophecy of Amos is constantly being fulfilled 
in the process of the survival of the fittest. Among 
all the nations those alone will survive and fill the earth 
that are pervaded with the moral spirit. A society 
based upon justice will be stronger than a society in 
which an aristocracy oppresses the other classes of 
the people. A nation in which the rich devise laws 
to protect themselves against free competition and in 
which the poor are prevented from bettering their 
condition, carries a germ of weakness within itself 
and will in the end have to pay for its errors dearly. 
The strong will conquer and the weak will go to the 
wall — that is the4,natural law of evolution. But bear 
in mind that there is no strength unless it be sup- 
ported by morality. The social law is a power — a 
power that destroys those who do not conform to it. 
Says the prophet : 

Yet destroyed I the Amorite whose height was like the height 
of the cedars, and he was strong as the oaks. Yet I destroyed his 
fruit from above and his roots from beneath. 

Rocks are demolished by silently- working atmos- 
pheric influences. And the strongest nations perish 
as soon as they deviate from the path of righteousness 
and the spirit of progressive morality. A constant 
selection takes place in the struggle for existence, and 
humanity is sifted like as corn is sifted in a sieve. 



238 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

Let us learn the truth and act accordingly, and we 
shall live. Let us not waver in the path of righteous- 
ness, but do faithfully some useful work in the service 
of humanity, lest we become like the chaff which the 
wind driveth away. 



ETHICS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 



This world of ours is a world of strife. Wherever 
we turn our eyes, there is war and competition and 
struggle. Battles are fought not only in human so- 
ciety, but in animal society also ; not only in the ani- 
mal kingdom, but in the plant kingdom ; not only in 
the empire of organized life, but in the realm of inor- 
ganic life — between the ocean and the land, between 
water and air, among minerals, and among the dif- 
ferent formations of mineral bodies, among planets 
and planetary systems, among suns and clusters of 
suns. Strife is identical with life, and struggle is the 
normal state of actual existence. 

We can easil}^ understand that a superficial ob- 
server of nature will feel inclined to look upon life as 
a chaotic jungle without rhyme or reason, in which 
the wildest hap-hazard and fortuitous chance rule su- 
preme. A closer inspection, however, will shov/ that 
there is after all order in the general turmoil and that a 
wonderful harmony results from the conflict of antag- 
onistic principles. Nay, we shall learn that all order 
proceeds from the antagonism of factors that work in 
opposite directions. It is the centrifugal and centrip- 
etal forces that shape our earth and keep it in equilib- 
rium. It is attraction and repulsion that govern the 
changes of chemistry. Gravitation throws all things 
into one centre, and radiation disperses the store of 



240 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

energy collected in that centre. And the same antith- 
esis of hostile principles manifests itself in love and 
hate, in surfeit and hunger, in hope and fear. 

There are many people who are not satisfied with 
this state of things. They dream of a paradise where 
there is no strife, no war, no conflict ; where there is 
eternal peace, unmixed happiness, joy without pain, 
and life without struggle. Whenever you try to de- 
pict in your imagination such a condition of things, 
you will find that a world of eternal peace is an im- 
possibility. The world in which life does not signify 
a constant struggle is not a heaven of perfection (as 
is imagined), but the cloudland of Utopia, an impos- 
sible state of fantastical contradictions. Should yow 
succeed in realizing in imagination the dream of your 
ideal of peace without inconsistency, it will turn out 
to be the Nirvana of absolute non-existence, the 
silence of the grave, the eternal rest of death. 

Natural science teaches that hate is inversed love 
and repulsion inversed attraction. Annihilate one 
principle and the other vanishes. Both principles are 
one and the same in opposite directions. Thus they 
come into conflict and their conflict is the process of life. 
Science does away with all dualism. The dualistic view 
appears natural to a crude and child-like mind. The 
Indian might say that heat is not cold and cold is 
not heat, yet the man who learns to express tempera- 
ture by the exact measurement of a thermometer must 
abandon the duahty of the two principles. Monism is 
established as soon as science commences to weigh 
and to measure. The divergence in the oneness of 
existence creates the two opposed principles, which 
are the factors that shape the world, and the en- 
counter of conflicting factors is the basis from which 



HOMILIE S OF SCIENCE. 241 

all life arises with its pains and joys, its affliction and 
happiness, with its battles, defeats, and victories. 

The world being a world of struggle, life teaches 
us the lesson that we live in order to fight ; we must 
not blink at this truth, for we cannot shirk the com- 
bat. Ethics, accordingly, if it is true ethics, and prac- 
tical ethics, must above all be an ethics of strife. It 
must teach us how to struggle, how to fight, how to 
aspire. In order to teach us the how, it must show us 
the goal that is to be striven for, and the ideal which 
we should pursue. 

The progress of civilization changes the weapons 
and abolishes barbaric practices ; yet it will never 
abolish the struggle itself. The struggle will become 
more humane, it will be fought without the unneces- 
sary waste which accompanies the rude warfare of the 
savage, but even a golden era of peace and social 
order will continue to remain an unceasing strife and 
competition. You cannot abolish competition even 
in the most complete co-operative system. There 
will always remain the struggle for occupying this or 
that place, and the competition for proving to be the 
fittest will continue so long as the world lasts ; and 
it is the plan of nature to let the fittest survive. 

There are ethical teachers who imagine that the 
purpose of ethics is the suppression of all struggle, 
who depict a state of society where there is pure 
altruism without conflicting interests, a state of mutual 
love, a heaven of undisturbed happiness. 

The ethics of pure altruism is just as wrong as the 
ethics of pure egotism. For it is our duty to stand 
up manfully in battle and to wage the war of honest 
aspirations. It is the duty of a manufacturer to com- 
pete with his competitors. It is the duty of the 



242 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

scholar, the philosopher, and the artist to rival the 
work of his co-laborers \ and the progress of humanity 
is the result of this general warfare. Organized life 
from its lowliest beginnings developed higher and 
higher by a continued struggle ; and it is not the 
victor alone to whom the evolution of ever higher and 
higher organisms is due, but to the vanquished also. 
The victor has gained new virtues in every strife, and 
it is the brave resistance of the vanquished that taught 
him these virtues. 

There is an old saga of a northern hero, to whose 
soul, it is said, were added all the souls of the enemies 
he slew. The strength, the accomplishments, the 
abilities of the conquered became the spoils of the 
conqueror ; and the spirits of the slain continued to 
live in the spirit of the victor, and made him stronger, 
nobler, wiser, better. This myth correctly represents 
the natural state of things, and we learn from it the 
great truth, that our efforts, even if we are the unfor- 
tunate party that is to be vanquished, will not be in 
vain ; our lives are not spent in uselessness, if we but 
struggle bravely and do the best we can in the battle 
of life. Furthermore, we learn to respect our adver- 
saries and to honor their courage. We are one factor 
only on the battlefield, and if our enemies existed not, 
we would not be what we are. We are one part only 
of the process of life and our enemies are the counter- 
part. Any contumely that we put upon them in fool- 
ish narrow-mindedness, debases and degrades our- 
selves ; any dishonesty that we show in fight, falls 
back upon ourselves. It will injure our enemies, as 
was intended, but it will do greater harm to ourselves, 
for it will disgrace us ; and our disgrace in that case 
will outlive the injury of our enemies. 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 243 

Ethics teaches us that all struggle must be under- 
taken in the service of a higher and greater cause than 
our egoistic self. He alone will conquer who fights for 
something greater than his personal interests ; and 
even if he be vanquished, he will still have the satis- 
faction that his ideal is not conquered with him. He 
will find successors to continue his work. His ideal, 
if it be a genuine ideal, will rise again in his succes- 
sors and they will accomplish a final victory for his 
aspirations. 

The Teutonic nations, — the Anglo-Saxons, the 
Franks, the Germans and their kin, — are, it appears, in 
many respects the most successful peoples in the world, 
because of their stern ethics of undaunted struggle to 
which they have adhered since prehistoric times. It 
was no disgrace for the Teutonic warrior to be slain, no 
dishonor to be vanquished ; but it was infamy worse 
than death to be a coward, it was a disgrace to gain 
a victory by dishonest means. The enemy was re- 
lentlessly combated, may be he was hated, yet it would 
have been a blot on one's escutcheon to treat him with 
meanness. It was not uncommon among these bar- 
barians for the victor to place a laurel wreath upon 
the grave of his foe, whom in life he had combated 
with bitterest hatred. There is an episode told in the 
Nibelungensaga which characterizes the ethical spirit 
of the combativeness of Teutonic heroes. Markgrave 
Riidiger has to meet the grim Hagen and to do him 
battle. Seeing, however, that his enemy's shield is 
hacked to pieces, he offers him his own, whereupon 
they proceed to fight. 

The moral teacher must not be blind to the laws of 
life. Ethics must not make us weak in the struggle 
for existence, but it must teach us the way to fig^ht and 



244 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

must show us the higher purpose to be realized by 
our struggle. 

Naturalists give us most remarkable reports about 
the degeneration of those organs and their functions 
and abilities which are not used. If man could live 
without reason, without education, language, without 
reason, mankind would soon degenerate into dumb 
brutes. 

Do not attempt to preach a morality that would de- 
prive man of his backbone. Man acquired his back- 
bone because in the struggle for life he had to stand 
upright, thus to keep his own. If it were possible 
at all to lead a life without struggle, the backbone of 
man would soon become a rudimentary organ. But 
as it is not possible, those men alone will survive that 
are strong characters, that stand upright in the strug- 
gle and fight with manly honesty and noble courage. 
The men with a moral backbone alone are those to 
whom the future belongs. 

Ethics must teach us how to struggle ; it must not 
hinder us in the combat but help us. And ethics will 
help us. Ethics demands that we shall never lose 
sight of the whole to which we belong. It teaches us 
never to forget the aim which humanity attains through 
the efforts of our conflicting interests; it inculcates the 
lesson to do our duty in the battle of life, not only be- 
cause this is required by our own interests, but be- 
cause it is the law of life that we have to obey. By a 
faithful obedience to the ethics of the struggle for life, 
we shall promote the welfare of mankind and contrib- 
ute to the enhancement of human progress. 



RENDER NOT EVIL FOR EVIL 



God is often compared in the Old Testament to a 
shepherd who leads his people in the paths of right- 
eousness ; and those who truthfully obey his com- 
mands, who allow themselves to be guided by him, 
are called his sheep, his lambs, his flock. Christ 
adopted the same simile and often refers to it. In the 
Acts (viii, 32) Christ himself is compared to a sheep. 
To him is referred the prophecy in Isaiah (liii, 7): 
*'He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and like a 
lamb dumb before his shearers, so opened he not his 
mouth." 

This comparison was sufficient to give the crown of 
glory to the sheep. Christians forgot that similes re- 
main similes ; that they do not cover the truth in all 
respects, but in one or two points only : and thus it 
happened that the weakness of the sheep, its sim- 
plicity, nay, its very stupidity, became an ideal of moral 
goodness and Christian virtue. This misconception 
of the true meaning of goodness received a further 
support in such passages as ''Ye resist not evil," and 
''Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom 
of heaven." Mental and physical weakness, so the 
doctrine of Christianity seemed to say, is a moral merit ; 
and the principle of absolute non-resistance was seri- 
ously defended by many devout believers. 

In recent times Christ's word "Ye resist not evil" 



246 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

has com^ again into prominence through the teachings 
of Count Tolstoi, who not only adopted it as a prac- 
tical rule of conduct but attempted to show through 
his example that it was possible to live up to it. 

Christ's command, ''Ye resist not evil," contains 
a great moral truth, and Count Tolstoi was taught it 
not through traditional belief in dogmatic Christianity, 
but through the hard facts of life. Having enjoyed a 
good education, he had become an unbeliever by his 
acquaintance with the so called sciences, and in his 
practical experiences he found himself confronted with 
many anxieties : care and worry for his beloved came 
upon him j he beheld the pale face of death ; and in the 
moment of despair the unbeliever found comfort and 
, strength in words of prayer. 

Count Tolstoi was converted not by the sermons 
and representations of a subtle apologetic divine, but 
by the overwhelming logic of facts consisting in the 
moral relations between husband and wife, brother 
and brother, friend and friend, man and man. It was 
life that taught the lesson ''Ye resist not evil" to 
Tolstoi, and his religion is a religion based upon ex- 
perience. 

The myths of the Saviour who came into the world 
from spheres beyond, contain pearls of imperishable 
^worth. Having ceased to believe in the sacred legend, 
we may very well preserve the moral truths that like 
valuable kernels are hidden in the useless husks of 
dogmatism. The ethical teacher of the future while 
rejecting the historical fables of Christ's life with an 
uncompromising truthfulness, must extract the gold, 
purified from dross, out of the ores of the old religions. 

Christ's word "Ye resist not evil" must not be 
misinterpreted as if it meant the abolition of all strug- 



HOMILIES OF SCIEXCE. 247 

gle and a passive submission to everything vile and 
low. A parallel passage, i Peter, iii, 8, reads as fol- 
lows : 

"Be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, 
love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous : not rendering evil for 
evil, or railing for railing ; but contrariwise blessing ; knowing 
that ye are thereunto called, that ye should inherit a blessing." 

Christ's word '^ Ye resist not evil" demands the 
suppression of the natural tendency of retaliation. The 
brutish desire in man for vengeance whenever he 
suffers a wrong, should give place to brotherly love 
and forgiveness. This is a divine command. Yet 
divinity, as we understand the term, does not stand in 
contradiction to nature. Divinity is nature ennobled 
elevated, and sanctified. The ethics of love is divine, 
because it is firmly established upon the facts of life ; 
and science, if it be not blind to the moral law that 
pervades nature, will find that it is true. Spinoza, 
whose ethics is not that of revelation, says (^Ethics, 
III, 43 and 44) : 

"Hatred is increased through hatred yet can be extinguished 
through love. 

" Hatred if completely conquered by love, changes into love ; 
and this love will be greater than if no hatred had preceded it." 

The evil of this world cannot be lessened by coun- 
teracting it through new evil. You cannot diminish 
it by committing more evils. The logic of this truth 
is becoming recognized in society now. Suppose that 
some one being in a rage, called you names. Would 
you stoop so low as to answer in the same tone ? Would 
you childishly act like the bad boy saying : "You're 
another ! " Certainly not, unless you lose your temper 
and do things that you will later regret. 

The doctrine ''Ye shall not render evil for evil," 



248 ■ HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

in this sense, will be more absolutely recognized the 
higher the standard of moral culture is. Yet this doc- 
trine does not at all imply the abolition of all struggle 
and the suppression of combat and fight. We are too 
much accustomed to look upon struggle as the root 
of all evil, and in that case we shall erroneously ex- 
pect that a world of moral life must be without com- 
petition, without war, without fight. The doctrine of 
non-resistance, in the sense of giving up all efforts to 
defend that which is right and just, is practically and 
morally untenable. Life in all its many phases is a 
constant struggle, and the ethics of life demands that 
we shall fight the good fight of faith trusting in the in- 
vincibility of the moral ideal. 

The sentence "Ye resist not evil" is ambiguous 
and it appears preferable to express the truth of this 
doctrine in the words, "Render not evil for evil." 
Evil must be resisted, but not by other evils ; self- 
ishness must be overcome but not by other and 
greater selfishness. Therefore, by the side of the doc- 
trine "Resist not evil with evil," let there appear the 
command : Do your best in the struggle for life and 
conquer evil, not because your own personal interests 
are at stake, but because higher principles are involved 
than the private affairs of your petty self. We must 
never lose sight of the truth that our struggle for ex- 
istence, even in commercial competition, is fought for 
the progress of humanity and for an ever higher and 
better realization of human ideals. 

Christ — that is, a moral teacher as described in 
the four gospels — could not possibly have meant by 
his word "Ye resist not evil," that doctrine of passive 
indolence that made of the sheep the ideal of moral 
perfection. For Christ himself fought and struggled. 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 249 

he discussed and wrangled with the Scribes and Phar- 
isees. When he stood before Caiaphas, according to 
the account of John, he was smitten in his face, and 
although he was ready to endure another blow, al- 
though he had to endure worse persecutions, and 
although he was not willed, even if he had been able 
to do it, to retaliate : yet he did not suffer it with a 
passive non-resistance ; he turned to the man who beat 
him and took him to account, saying : '' If I have 
spoken evil, bear witness of the evil \ but if well, why 
smitest thou me? " 

The doctrine ''Render not evil for evil" is ad- 
dressed to every single person as an individual. But it 
does not refer to the government, nor to the magistrate. 
If you are a judge and called upon to pronounce a ver- 
dict, the word has no reference to your judgment. We 
as persons have to renounce all egotism and all vin- 
dictiveness. For egotism and the ill-will of the human 
heart are the roots of all evil. Our egotism and the 
evil wants of petty personal desires must be renounced 
once for all and without reserve, not only where we 
do wrong, but also where we suffer wrong. 

That Christ did not intend to teach the weak morals 
of non-resistence can be learned from his own de- 
meanor. When he and his disciples came to Jeru- 
salem, ''Jesus went into the temple, and began to 
cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and 
overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the 
seats of them that sold doves ; and would not suffer 
that any man should carry any vessel through the 
temple. And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not 
written. My house shall be called of all nations the 
house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of 
thieves." 



250 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

Christ did not render evil for evil where his per- 
sonal interests were involved, yet if punishment is to 
be called an evil, he did not hesitate to render evil for 
evil in that dominion where he considered himself as 
the representative of Him that — according to his ideals 
of religious life — he felt had sent him. 

Humanity, Christian and non-Christian, is under 
the influence of the sheep allegory still. One of the 
greatest biologists denies the existence of moral facts 
in nature, because the sheep and the deer are eaten by 
the wolves, and because in human society the same 
struggle for existence as in brute creation is fiercely 
fought, although with more refined weapons. The 
struggle for existence will continue, it can not be 
abolished, because it is a natural law, and sheepish- 
ness will never triumph in the world of real life. 
Having proved this, the scientist is satisfied, that na- 
ture is immoral. 

Let us beware of the ethics of ovine morality. 
Morality is not negative, it is not mere submission to 
evil, no pure passivity, no suffering, simply: morality is 
positive. Not by the omission of certain things do we 
do right, but by straining all the faculties of mind and 
body to do our best in the struggle for life which we 
have to fight. We may be weak, and we may feel our 
weakness. The greater should our efforts be, to fight 
the struggle ethically. We may be poor in spirit and 
we may feel our want, but nature will supply us with 
that which we want, if we but earnestly struggle to 
acquire it. He who is strong in spirit and in body, 
he who feels his strength and misuses it, will not be 
the conqueror in the end. It is not the self-sufficient 
that are blessed; but those who are aware of their in- 



HOMILIES OF SCIE.YCE. 251 

sufficiency. This only, in my opinion, can be the 
meaning when Christ says : 

" Blessed are the poor in spirit : for theirs is the kingdom of 
heaven," 

We must be on our guard against unfeeling stern- 
ness, yet on the other hand let us not drop into the 
other extreme. We must be on our guard against 
ethical sentimentality also. There is too much preach- 
ing about the sweetness of religion and the rapturous 
delight of ethics. Yet this saccharine religiosity is just 
as impotent and useless as that ovine morality which 
glorifies in its weakness and does not struggle for 
strength. 

Austere rigidity in religion and ethics is like a rose 
without odor, it is life without gladness, and obedience 
without loving devotion. The passivity of a lamb-like 
submission is idealized weakness fortified and strength- 
ened by moral vanity and sugared over with senti- 
mental enthusiasm. 

Religion and ethics, we do not deny, are full of 
sweetness and noble joys, yet at the same time they 
are stern ; they are of an unrelenting severity and 
majesty. It is only the unison of both, the strength 
of austerity and the fervor of sentiment, that makes 
morality wholesome, sound, and healthy. 



RELIGION AND ETHICS. 



There are people who believe that theology and 
metaphysics have nothing to do with morality. Re- 
ligious and philosophical world-conceptions, it is main- 
tained, are one thing and ethical convictions are an- 
other. This is true in a limited sense only. It is true 
that the side issues of theology and metaphysics, which 
by theologians and metaphysical thinkers are generally 
considered as the most important of things, have as a 
rule little or no bearing whatever on moralit5^ In so 
far, however, as Theology and Metaphysics discuss 
vital religious and philosophical problems, they have 
a certain relation to morality. 

Morality depends on a sound conception of our- 
selves in relation to the world and, therefore, philo- 
sophical and religious errors will have an injurious 
effect upon morality. 

If we allow ourselves to be carried away by im- 
pulse, we are not moral. Animals are un-moral. Their 
brutish conduct is not immoral ; it is natural in them, 
as it becomes their brutish nature; and their good 
conduct (self-sacrifice of mothers for their young, 
etc.), although we justly praise it, cannot be properly 
considered as moral, because it is the result of instinct 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 253 

done from impulse and not an act of conscious delib- 
eration. Man is moral in so far as he consciously and 
deliberately regulates his actions according to his re- 
lations to the All. Religion supplies him with the 
reason whyih^ principles of his actions should be such 
as they are, and why he should do what he considers 
to be right and proper to do. 

Religion, if understood to be our recognition of 
the Unity in Nature, teaches us to consider ourselves 
as parts of the whole ; and who can doubt its strong 
influence upon all our conduct? The laws of the Uni- 
verse govern also the motions of our body. Heat and 
gravitation operate as much in the functions of our 
organs as in the solar systems of the universe. Our 
lives depend upon surrounding nature, upon the at- 
mosphere we breathe, the soil upon which we stand 
and the food which mother earth produces for us. 
Our existence is a continuous exchange and intercom- 
munication with the whole ''in which we live and 
move and have our being." The very pressure of the 
air upon our limbs is part of our life, which, if taken 
away, would cause instant dissolution. 

But we are not only physical parts of Nature, we 
belong also to a higher order of natural growth which 
discloses ethical ideas and moral duties. The threads 
of each individual life are connected with the lives of 
other beings like ourselves, of beings whose origin is 
the same as ours and with whom we form one great 
family. These relations, although woven of invisible 
threads, are of no less importance than the coarser re- 
lations of our body to physical Nature. These rela- 
tions of social and family life, if recognised, will teach 
us duties, and the performance of these duties is mor- 
ality. 



254 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

Religion, Science, Philosophy, Ethics and Morals 
accordingly are closely related to each other; religion 
is the recognition of the Unity in Nature which makes 
us feel that we are parts of it; Science is the study of 
the several departments of nature by observation and 
classification of its phenomena ; philosophy is the re- 
sult of the sciences, systematised. Ethics is the sci- 
ence of morals, and Morality is our behaviour regu 
lated by religion, viz., by the recognition of the Unity 
of Nature in all its phases, the lower physical, the 
physiological and above all the social relations between 
man and man. 

Those who are moral, prove that they have re- 
ligion, for the moral man regulates his actions in ac- 
cordance with his duties as implied by his relations to 
the All, especially to his fellow-beings. It is of great 
consequence to have religion in this sense, but it is of 
little consequence to cojifess a religion. Religio?i has 
to do with morals and morality, but all the different 
religions, i. e. the rites of churches, synagogues, and 
mosques, the various confessions, church-membership, 
etc., have little or no connection with morality, and 
if they have, it is only in so far as they contain religion. 

False religions and wrong philosophies had always 
detrimental effects upon their adherents. The quiet- 
ism of India has nipped in the bud a grand and rich 
civilisation, and the dualism of the middle ages has 
dragged many thousand victims to a shameful death 
for the alleged crime of witchcraft. The evil conse- 
quences of fundamental errors in philosophy and in 
religion bear witness to the dependence of morality 
on philosophy and religion. If you poison the religious 
or philosophical views of a man or of a nation, you 
will poison their morality also. The roots of man's 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 255 

intellectual life (viz., of that in man which makes of 
him a human being) are his convictions and his emo- 
tional inclinations (i. e., his philosophy and his re- 
ligion), while his actions are the fruits thereof, by 
which we may recognise their soundness and vitality. 



THE ETHICS OF LITERARY DISCUSSION. 



The ethics of literary discussion can be expressed 
in one sentence : Let the search for truth be your su- 
preme maxim to which all other interests must be sub- 
ordinate and subservient. Controversies v^hich (not 
unlike duels) are v^aged for mere personal matters, 
have either to conform to this ethical maxim, or if they 
do not, they will be recognised as downright unethical 
or at least non-ethical. 

The following rules are derived from the ethical 
maxim of literary discussion : 

Never defend an opinion which you do not believe 
yourself. Never accept a belief which is not demon- 
strable. You must not only be convinced that it is 
so, but your arguments must be strong enough to con- 
vince impartial readers. 

Strength of argument rests on the following con- 
ditions : 

1. The facts upon which it is based, must be well 
established. 

2. These facts must cover the whole field, so as to 
be exhaustive as instances. 

3. The reasoning must be logical. 

4. The presentation of the argument must be lucid. 

5. Your presentation cannot be lucid if you are not 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 257 

clear yourself. Accordingly, you must be ready to 
define every word you use. 

6. Technical terms should not be employed unless 
their definitions are given. 

7. Be careful that your words and especially your 
terms are used as they are commonly understood and 
not in a double or ambiguous sense. 

8. Make the main points prominent and do not lose 
yourself in matters of detail, however interesting those 
details may be. They draw the attention of your 
readers and of yourself from the main subject. 

These rules being observed, you can fearlessly 
await the most powerful adversary. 

Before attacking the position of your adversary, try 
to understand his arguments from his standpoint. 

Acknowledge fully where your adversary is right. 

Where he uses an ambiguous term, state plainly 
in what sense the term would be allowable. 

This is a matter of justice due to your adversary. 
To show justice in this way is advantageous first, to 
your opponent, and then, perhaps in a higher degree, 
to 3'^ourself, and what is most important, to the problem 
under discussion. It clears the situation and you thus 
limit the field of controversy to those points where you 
know your adversary to be wrong. 

The points of agreement have become neutral 
ground which, it is true, your adversary can use for 
an honest retreat, if he chooses. However, his anni- 
hilation is not the object of the discussion, but the 
elucidation of truth. If he does not choose the chance 
of an honest retreat, his defeat will be the more inev- 
itable, the more carefull}^ the field of contest has been 
limited to his errors. 

The weakness of an opponent is generally sup- 



258 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

posed to be the strength of his antagonist. This is 
utterly false. It must be a poor cause you defend, if 
it profits by the weakness of its adversaries. The 
strength of an adversary adds to your own strength if 
you defend a cause that is worth defending. The weak- 
ness of an adversary lowers you down to his own in- 
tellectual weakness. Therefore, do not have any discus- 
sion with weak opponents, and if you cannot avoid an 
encounter, do not take advantage of their weakness. 
The common issue is lost sight of by abusing an ad- 
versary for his weakness, ignorance, or faults. Conse- 
quently, you being the stronger, the duty of helping and 
promoting your adversary devolves on you. This should 
be done without ado, simply by giving information. 

If your adversary uses rude language or deroga- 
tory expressions, there is no need of following his ex- 
example or of attempting to out do him. Either do not 
answer his rant at all, or if you cannot avoid giving an 
answer, ignore all personal disparagement and confine 
your comments to the cause at issue. If you adopt 
the railing method of your adversary, you lower your- 
self to his moral inferiority. 

Never use sophisms. 

Sophisms easily impose upon large masses, but 
they do not delude the few independent thinkers who 
are perhaps silent by-standers. The ultimate result 
has never as yet depended upon the masses who judge 
rashly, but upon the judgment of the few independent 
thinkers who judge slowly but in most cases justly. 

Sophisms are dangerous to the parties who employ 
them ; sophisms will ultimately fall back and harm 
their own inventor. By using sophisms you venture 
on untenable ground, there to plant 3^our colors, and 
if your enemy is on the alert, you will lose not only the 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 259 

position but your colors also. Sophisms afford inci- 
dental and transitory advantages. 

If 3^our adversary by negligence shows a hidden 
weakness or is guilty of a self-contradiction, point it 
out to him, stating at the same time how he should 
have expressed himself from his own standpoint. If 
his negligence is merely carelessness of verbal expres- 
sion, you have settled the point for good. However, if 
the self-contradiction lies deeper, you have thus limited 
the field of discussion (as suggested above) to those 
points where the difference of the issues at stake will 
be seen to be primar}^ and radical. 

This alwa3"s is the end toward which all honest 
and well directed discussion must tend. Even if the 
disputants cannot gain the best of one another, their 
discussion must elucidate the problem about which 
the discussion is waged. The disputants must learn 
by their discussion in how far they agree and wherein 
their differences consist : whether it is only a difference 
of words (which happens much oftener than is gen- 
erally imagined), or a material difference. If it is a 
material difference, we must find out by the discussion, 
whether the difference is fundamental, i. e., whether 
the parties disagree because they start from different 
principles (which the}^ have accepted as axioms) or 
whether it is a different interpretation of facts acknowl- 
edged by both parties, or whether one party takes its 
stand on facts which are not recognised by the other 
party as sufficienth^ established. 

Whatever should be the result of a discussion con- 
ducted upon such ethical maxims, the discussion would 
never be entirely useless, but would be valuable in 
exact proportion to the issue at stake and the com- 
bined abilities of both opponents. 



SEXUAL ETHICS. 



Sexual ethics is the very core of all ethics. It is 
the most important sphere of human conduct, the ten- 
derest, holiest, and most delicate realm of moral aspira- 
tions. When speaking of morality, we first of all think 
of sexual purity. So much is sexual ethics regarded 
as the very essence of morality ! Atid no wonder that 
it is so. Consider but for a moment the importance 
of sexual relations ! The future of our race depends 
upon them. The generations to come are shaped, 
they are created through sexual relations. 

The legalized form of the sexual relation is called 
marriage. If marriage were not a sacrament, we 
ought to make it such, for it is the dearest, the most 
important, and most sacred of all human bonds. 

The relation of parents to children is sacred in- 
deed. It is the relation of the past to the present. 
Parents hand down the hallowed torch of spirit- 
life to the present generation ; and if there is any- 
thing holier still, it certainly is the alliance between 
husband and wife to become parents and to devote 
themselves to the continuation of humanity and all 
the spiritual treasures of the race. 

The sexual relation is a natural want produced 
through the necessity of self-preservation. The hu- 
man soul yearns to live ; it yearns to grow and to mul- 
tiply. In the face of death it longs for immortality. 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 261 

but immortality is not granted to the individual and 
in order to become immortal an individual must grow 
beyond the limits of individuality. The natural con- 
sequence of these conditions is that immortality can 
spring from love only. Immortality must be gained 
by sacrifice, it must be taken by conquest, and there is 
but one power that can gain immortalit}^ It is that 
power of which the Song of Songs says, '' it is stronger 
than death." That one power is the holiness of the 
sexual relation, it is matrimonial love. 

If we deprive sex-relation of its sanctity, it sinks 
down far below the most brutish acts of lowest animal 
life. Human sex-relation in which the spiritual ele- 
ments of love and an exchange of soul are lacking de- 
grades man and more so woman ; it deprives them of 
their sanctity and sullies the holiest emotions they 
are capable of — the longing for immortal life. Animal 
sex-relations are at least natural. Animals yield to 
their natural wants without any consciousness of their 
importance or consequences. In the absence of 
thought, it is nature that acts in them. Immoral men 
and women, who prostitute the holiest sentiments be- 
cause they imagine they find a pleasure in so doing, 
cease to remain natural and accustom themselves ar- 
tificially to unnatural wants which weaken their bodies 
and poison their souls. 

The apostle (in the Epistle to the Ephesians, vi. 2) 
speaks of the commandment "Honor thy father and 
mother, " as being ' ' the first commandment with prom- 
ise." Reverence to parents is our willingness to re- 
ceive the sacred torch of human soul-life with a grate- 
ful mind. Lack of reverence is a self-deprivation of this 
rich inheritance, and the highest reverence is shown 
not by a passive reception of merely conservative 



262 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

obedience, but by actively taking possession of the 
spiritual treasures by sifting them critically and by in- 
creasing their value. In fact, there is no passive re- 
ceiving ; all receiving is an active taking. Says Goethe : 

" What from your father's heritage is lent, 
Earn it anew to really possess it." 

Greater than the promise of the fifth command- 
ment is the blessing that accompanies sexual purity. 
Chastity is the condition of physical, mental, and 
moral health. When the Romans became acquainted 
with the valiant barbarians of the North, they recog- 
nized the natural holiness of the sexual relation as the 
source of their strength. Caesar as well as Tacitus 
are fully aware of this fact and give in their histor- 
ical accounts of German life with keen foresight due 
prominence to this most important factor in the evo- 
lution of a nation of barbarians. 

The sexual instinct of man serves a most important 
and sacred purpose ; it is the preservation of human 
soul-life, it is the attainment of immortality. If it is 
led into other channels, it decoys man into danger- 
ous aberrations. Woe to those who find pleasure in 
depriving it of its sanctity! The curse that falls upon 
them will outlive their lives, for it will go down to 
their children and the children of their children. 

It is not ethereal prudery that nature demands of 
us, not an extirpation or suppression of nature, but an 
elevation and purification, that the noblest features 
of nature's living and moving and being may be devel- 
oped. A cynical attitude towards the mysteries of 
sexual life besmirches the soul of man with moral filth. 
Chastity has regard for laws that underlie the procrea- 
tion of life, and reverence for the tenderest and most 
wonderful of nature's secret dispensations. 



MONOGAMY AND FREE LOVE. 



If we understand by free love what the word 
Hterally means, an absence of all compulsion to love so 
that love is granted and received as a free gift, what 
can be better, nobler, and more natural than free love ? 
Love must always be free — or it is not love. Accord- 
ingly, free love is a matter of course, which in its pro- 
per meaning no one can dispute. Yet if we understand 
by free love that which as a rule is preached by most 
of the so-called apostles of free love, it would mean 
the absence of all restraint in the relation of the sexes, 
the destruction of its ideal element and the reign of 
licentious laxity. In that case it is only a beautiful 
name that has been given to an ugly monster ; it is 
a devil that appears in the garment of an angel ; it is 
moral filth praised as celestial manna. 

There are laws of life which we must obey under 
penalty of perdition, and there are laws of love which 
we must obey under penalty of destroying the holiness 
of love or even defeating its end and purpose. 

The purpose of love, that is of sexual love, is not 
the gratification of the sexual instinct, nor is it any 
pleasure that man may derive from such gratification. 
Wherever there is a gratification in love or in friend- 
ship, it is, regarded from the moral point of view, in- 
cidental ; it is of secondary consideration and we need 



264 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

not speak of it here. The purpose of sexual love, its 
end and its holy law, is the welding of two souls into 
one so that a new soul-life may spring from it in which 
the two souls are inseparably fused. 

What is soul ? The Saxon poet says : 

" Soul is form and doth the body make." 

Soul is the form of a living organism. A fusion of 
souls actually takes place in the procreation of a new 
life ; and this fusion of souls is one of those mysteries 
of nature which even, though science should succeed in 
explaining to our satisfaction its mechanical process, 
will forever remain a wonder before which we stand 
spell-bound in awe and admiration — a wonder which 
is grander and more miraculous than all miracles in 
which many of us are so fond of believing. 

What is the law of love that must be obeyed ? The 
law of love is obedience to the purpose of love, and 
the purpose of love is one of the holiest duties of 
man ; it is the building up of our race. And this can 
be accomplished only if it is done with truthfulness, 
devotion, and self sacrifice. 

The love of friendship between congenial minds, 
the love of the teacher to his pupils, of the preacher 
to his congregation, are also a building up, a preserva- 
tion and a transference of soul-life in the human race ; 
but conjugal love is devoted to the procreation of new 
souls, and without the sex relation of conjugal love 
humanity would die out. 

Conjugal love in its legal form is called marriage, 
and the present form of marriage among all the civil- 
ized races is monogamy. Humanity has found by 
experience that society prospers best where the sexual 
relations are so arranged that one husband and one 



HOMILIES OF SCIEXCE. 265 

wife constitute the foundation of a family. The races 
in which polyandry prevails are rare exceptions ; and 
wherever polyandry is the normal state of society, 
there is, as a matter of fact, no civilization, no cul- 
ture, no progress. We have reasons to believe that 
polyandric tribes are a very low phase of human so- 
ciet}^, perhaps even a state of degeneration which in 
the end will lead to extinction. 

Polygamy is practiced still in Asia, and it has been 
practiced among highly civilized people. Yet wher- 
ever monogamous and polygamous nations were rivals 
for supremacy, the monogamous nation proved always 
victorious in every kind of competition, in war as well 
as in peace. 

There can be no doubt that monogamy is that form 
of matrimonial relations which best attains the ends 
of sexual love. Polygamous nations may have, but 
as a rule they do not have more children than monoga- 
mous nations, yet the children raised in monogamous 
family life are sturdier, healthier, and better educated. 
The institution of polygamy, while it degrades woman, 
easily induces man to marry merely for the gratifica- 
tion of their sexual appetites, and the seriousness of 
the duties of marriage is overlooked. 

The ultimate purpose of marriage is the preserva- 
tion of human soul-life, and if monogamy is more effi- 
cient in this one point than polygamy, if it enables 
man to raise a generation that loves freedom and de- 
lights in progress, it must be preferred whatever other 
advantages or pleasures might be connected with any 
other system of regulating the sexual relations in hu- 
man society. 

Monogamous nations are distinguished by love of 
freedom and by a progressive spirit ; polygamous pec- 



266 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

pie are on the contrary easily enslaved. Their life 
as a rule shows a state of stagnancy, and their history 
consists of a series of court intrigues and palace revolu- 
tions. 

Monogamy has become a holy institution to the 
nations of Aryan speech, because their civilization 
rests upon monogamous family life. So long as the 
moral sense of a nation is vigorous, it will most se- 
verely resent whatever threatens to destroy the holi- 
ness of monogamous family life. Thus the apostles of 
free love when they attempt to attack and destroy mon- 
ogamy will meet with almost unanimous resistance. 

The theory of free love in the sense of unre- 
stricted sensuality is sometimes claimed to be the nat- 
ural state, while matrimony is denounced by the de- 
fenders of free love as unnatural. If that were so, all 
the institutions of civilization ought to be considered 
unnatural. Raw food would be natural and cooked 
food unnatural ; to live like the monkeys of the Sunda 
Islands would be natural, while plowing, sowing, and 
harvesting would be unnatural. Indeed the claim that 
free love is the natural state has been made only by 
most immature minds, who are without knowledge of 
the historical growth of our institutions, who are not 
familiar with the evils of such former states of society 
as are supposed to be more natural. 

The defenders of free love very often lack all per- 
sonal experience of harmonious and healthy family 
life. Not infrequently they have sprung from a mar- 
riage of ill-mated parents and have been too deeply 
impressed with certain incidental evils developed in 
such cases by the monogamous system. It would be 
a rare exception indeed if a father or a mother would 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 267 

advocate for their children the theory of unrestrained 
sexual intercourse. 

Free love might perhaps be the correct theory, if 
such institutions as marriage could be judged from 
the standpoint of single individuals. The sex relation 
however is of greater concern than mere individual 
interest ; and the problems rising therefrom must be 
judged from the higher standpoint of the common 
welfare of society. 

The nature of human society develops certain re- 
lations which are wanting in the lower stages of animal 
life; but they are nevertheless just as natural. Who 
would say the oak is less natural than the lichen, only 
because the oak represents a higher stage in the evo- 
lution of plant life ? The oak however would become 
unnatural, it would be in a morbid state, if its organs 
would degenerate so as to fall back to the lower stages 
of plant life. 

Let us beware lest in trying to be natural, we 
should degrade ourselves into habits which may be 
natural to animals but are most unnatural to human 
beings — not that the satisfaction of the animal wants 
of man is unworthy of his higher nature, but that the 
animal way of satisfying them must be condemned. 

It cannot be concealed however that as high an 
ideal as monogamy is, it sometimes demands great 
sacrifices ; and the social sentiment which by law as 
well as by public opinion enforces the institution of 
monogamy, will sometimes have its victims. Mar- 
riages in which a man and a woman who for some 
reason cannot agree, are joined together until death 
shall part them, will produce misery that changes life 
into hell. There are also cases in which for some rea- 



268 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

son or other a legalization of the bond that has joined 
two noble souls in sacred love, could not take place. 
There are several well known instances even among 
great thinkers and geniuses of literary fame. There 
are some cases that cannot be measured by the usual 
standard of morality. It is a fact that men and women 
whose fates led them into paths that were different 
from the prescribed forms of marital relations suf- 
fered greatly from public prejudice. We should in 
such cases remember how kindly Christ treated the 
woman that was found guilty. ''He that is without 
sin among you," Christ said, and we understand that 
he here refers to the sins against our sexual ideal of 
morality, ''let him first cast a stone at her." 

The sexual instinct in man is a most powerful ele- 
ment of his soul- life. It is dangerous to rouse it and 
more dangerous still to suppress or eradicate it. The 
whole vigor of natural forces is hidden in it. Sexual 
love wherever it grows is a serious thing to deal with. 
If it cannot have its way in legitimate channels, it will 
like steam that is shut up, break its way through 
laws and customs in spite of prejudices and public 
condemnation. 

Let us therefore beware on the one hand lest we 
fall into temptation, and on the other hand when we 
see the mote in the eye of our brother, lest our judg- 
ment be too severe. Those who are without sin, be- 
ware that they preserve the purity of their soul. He 
who according to the holy legend of the Christian gos- 
pel was above all temptation, abstained from throwing 
a stone. He said in his lordly dignity to the adul- 
teress : "Go and sin no more." 



MORALITY AND VIRTUE. 



Morality is taught in our churches and in our 
schools ; it is preached in our reHgious and Hberal 
congregations. And yet there is a strong doubt in 
the minds of many whether obedience to moral pre- 
scripts will be a help to a man who wants to get on in 
life. We hear it again and again that the moral man 
is the stupid man, the dupe of the smart impostor, 
while the man of the world, the man of business and of 
success must use misrepresentations. Strict honesty 
is said to be impossible. We are told by men of 
learning and experience who are supposed to know 
the world, that ''the two sayings 'Be virtuous 
and ycu will be happy' and 'Honesty is the best 
policy,' are very questionable." And it is claimed by 
many that if that kind of honesty which never mis- 
represents nor ever keeps back part of the truth, were 
practiced, it would be difficult to carry on business."^ 

This view of life according to which the utility of 
honesty is of a doubtful character, which induces us to 
incline toward trusting in dishonesty as a good policy, 
which makes trickery and the methods of misrepre- 
sentation appear as promoting our interests, is the 
worst error, the falsest conception of life and the most 

* See the article "A Few Instances of Applied Ethics" in The Open Court 
No. 219. 



270 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

dangerous superstition that can prevail, and woe to 
that community where it becomes prevalent. 

The grocer who sells impure goods as pure, the 
merchant who inveigles people to buy b}^ false labels 
will succeed in cheatmg the public time and again. 
But let us not be hasty in forming our opinion, 
that cheating is advantageous ; we shall find that in 
the long run this man cannot prosper through mis- 
representations. There is but one thing that will wear, 
that is truth, and truthfulness is the only good policy. 

The man who intends to cheat must be very smart, 
very wide-awake and very active in order to succeed, 
and in the end he will find out that better and easier 
rewards are allotted to the industry and intelligence 
that are used in the service of straightforward and 
honest purposes. 

Several curious counterfeits are exhibited under 
glas-s to the inspection of the public in the treasury of 
the United States at Washington, and among them 
are two bills, one of fifty the other of twenty dollars, 
both executed with brush and pen only and yet they 
are marvels of exactness, and it must have been very 
hard to discover that they were imitations. No won- 
der that they passed through several banks before they 
were detected. The man who made them was an 
artist and he must have spent on their fabrication 
many weeks of close work. For the same amount of 
similar artistic and painstaking labor he would have 
easily realised more than double the return of the 
value which these counterfeits bear on their faces. 

Is there any character more instructive than Eph- 
raim Jenkinson in Oliver Goldsmith's world-famous 
novel"TheVicar of Wakefield." Howsuccessfuljenkin- 
son was in his calling as a trickster and a rogue ! and yet 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 271 

to be caught but once in a hundred times is for a rogue 
sufficient to ruin him forever. The Vicar and Jenkin- 
son meet in the prison, and when the Vicar, having 
recognised by his voice the man who cheated him out 
of his horse, expresses surprise at his youthful appear- 
ance, the man answered, ''Sir, you are little ac- 
quainted with the world ; I had at that time false hair, 
and have learned the art of counterfeiting every age 
from seventeen to seventy." Jenkinson indeed appears 
as a master of his trade, yet he adds with a sigh : 
''Ah ! sir, had I but bestowed half the pains in learn- 
"ing a trade that I have in learning to be a scoundrel, 
" I might have been a rich man at this day." 

Jenkinson is too smart to be wise enough to follow 
the experience of millenniums, laid down in the moral 
rules, and he found this out when he had leisure 
enough to think of his life within the prison walls. He 
says on another occasion to the Vicar : 

"Indeed I think, from my own experience, that 
"the knowing one is the silliest fellow under the sun. 
"I was thought cunning from my very childhood: 
"when but seven years old, the ladies would say that 
"I was a perfect little man; at fourteen I knew the 
"world, cocked my hat, and loved the ladies; at 
"twenty, though I was perfectly honest, yet every one 
" thought me so cunning that not one would trust me. 
" Thus I was at last obliged to turn sharper in my own 
"defence, and have lived ever since, my head throb- 
"bing with schemes to deceive, and my heart palpi- 
"tating with fears of detection. I used often to laugh 
" at your honest, simple neighbor Flamborough, and 
"one way or another generally cheated him once a 
"year. Yet still the honest man went forward with- 
"out suspicion and grew rich, while I still continued 



272 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

"tricksy and cunning, and was poor, without the con- 
'^solation of being honest." 

Only a very superficial experience leads us to the 
assumption that wickedness is a help in the world and 
that the unscrupulous have an advantage in life. And 
this is a sore temptation to those who believe that it 
is so. Says Asaph in the seventy-third psalm : 

"But as for me, my feet were almost gone. My steps had 
well nigh slipped. 

"For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity 
of the wicked. 

"They are not in trouble as other men; neither are they 
plagued like other men. 

" Therefore pride encompasseth them about as a chain ; vio- 
lence covereth them as a garment. 

"Their eyes stand out with fatness: they have more than 
their heart could wish." 

But the prosperity of the wicked is mere appear- 
ance. It is the state of the world as things seem to 
be, when only isolated instances are considered. The 
wicked may succeed a hundred times, but in the end 
they are sure to fail, and if they fail they are done with 
forever. An honest man may fail a hundred times and 
yet he may rise again, for his hands are clean and his 
conscience is not weighed down by guilt. Asaph con- 
tinues : 

"Then I went into the sanctuary of God and I observed their 
end. 

" Surely thou didst set them in slippery places. Thou castest 
them down in destruction. 

" How are they brought into desolation as in a covenant, they 
are utterly consumed with terrors." 

Honesty is after all the best policy and he who 
does not believe it will have to pay for it dearly in his 
life. 

But let us not go too far in our trust in honesty as 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 273 

v/ell as in all negative morality. Honesty is not enough 
to make success in life ; honesty is not as yet virtue, 
and obedience to the several injunctions of the ''thou 
shalt not " conveys by no means an indisputable claim 
to prosperity. True virtue is active not passive, it is 
positive, not negative. 

What is virtue? 

Morality as the word is usually understood is merely 
a refraining from wrong- doing; it is the avoidance of 
all that which does harm to our neighbor, which in- 
jures society or retards the growth and evolution of 
mankind. However, morality in order to be all it can 
be, ought to be more ; it ought to be virtue, and virtue 
is the practically applied ability to do some good work. 
Virtue is activity, it is doing and achieving. And 
what is the good work which stamps activity as vir- 
tue ? Virtuous is that kind of work which enhances 
the growth and evolution of mankind, which helps so- 
ciety, which promotes the welfare of our neighbors as 
well as of ourselves. 

Mark ! virtue is not exclusively altruistic ; it is 
not opposed to egotism. Virtue may be altruistic, 
but there are sometimes very egotistic people who 
possess great virtues. Their virtues may be employed 
first and even so far their intentions go exclusively in 
the service of egotism. Nevertheless, they will de- 
signedly or undesignedly enhance the progress of man- 
kind, and therefore we have to consider their abilities, 
their methods of action, their manners of work as 
virtues. 

There are m_en of great virtue who have conspic- 
uous moral flaws and it is not uncommon to judge of 
great men according to the pedantic morality of the 
Sunday school ethics. The bad boy who plays truant 



274 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

possesses sometimes more positive virtue than the good 
boy who is pliable and obedient to his teachers. It is 
a narrow view of morality and indeed an actually 
wrong ethics that cavils at the heroes of mankind, 
pointing out and magnifying their peccadilloes in order 
to obliterate and forget their virtues. Goethe whose 
greatness has often been detracted by the smallness 
of such dwarfs as have the impudence to speak in the 
name of morality said of Napoleon, the great con- 
queror and legislator : 

" At last before the good Lord's throne 
At doomsday stood Napoleon. 
The devil had much fault to find 
With him as well as with his kind. 
His sins made up a lengthy list 
And on reading all did Satan insist. 
God the Father, may be it was God the Son, 
Or even perhaps the Holy Ghost— 
His mind was not at all composed — 
He answered the Devil and thus began: 
' I know it, and don't you repeat it here ; 
You speak like a German Professor, my dear. 
Still, if you dare to take him, well — 
Then, drag him with you down to hell.' " 

Lack of positive virtue is often considered as moral. 
Lack of courage is taken for peacefulness, lack of 
strength is taken for gentility, lack of activity is taken 
for modesty. If moral people are deficient in energy 
and ability, do they not deserve to be beaten by the 
wicked who possess energy and ability? Says Goethe in 
a little poem : 

" The angels were fighting for the right. 
But they were beaten in every fight. 
Everything went topsy turvy 
For the devil was very nervy. 
He took the whole despite their prayer 
That God might help them in their despair. 
Says Logos, who since eternity 
Had clearly seen that so it must be, 
• They should not care about being uncivil 
But try to fight like a real devil, 



f 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 275 

^;- To win the day, to struggle hard, 

" And do their praying afterward.' 

■- The maxim needed no repeating 

y And lo 1 the devil got his beating. 

;• T' was done and all the angels were glad — 

■ To be a devil is not so bad." 

;} Let us not be pusillanimous in ethics. It is pusil- 

I lanimity which produces squinting views of morality. 

I The morality of the pedant, the exhortations of the 

% Sunday-school teacher, and the ethics of professors 

I and lectures are not always correct, and if they are not 

f' exactly incorrect they are often insufficient or merely 

I negative. The opinion that morality is no good guid- 

ance in life, that honesty is not always the best policy, 
that the unscrupulous, the deceitful, the immoral have 
a better chance in the struggle for life rests either on 
an insufficient experience or an insufficient conception 
of what ethics means. 

Let us not be shaken in our trust in truth. Truth- 
fulness toward ourselves and others is the best policy, 
it is the only possible policy that will stand for any 
length of time. Trickery, misrepresentation, deceit, 
imply certain ruin. At the same time let us remem- 
ber that negative morality is not sufficient, we must 
have or acquire positive virtues. The omission of sins 
is not as yet the fulfilment of the law, the ideal of 
moral perfection is infinitely greater, it consists in 
building up the future of mankind in noble thoughts 
and energetic works. 



ARISTOCRATOMANIA. 



Envy of the rich is a very common feeHng among the 
poor. And why is it so common ? Because the rich 
are more fortunate in possessing v^ordly goods to sat- 
isfy not only their needs, but also any unnecessary 
wants. They have the means of procuring for them- 
selves whenever they please all sorts of pleasures 
which because they are expensive lie outside the reach 
of the poor. 

It is true that the rich have the means to procure 
themselves pleasures in an extraordinarily higher de- 
gree than the poor ; but if the poor imagine that for 
that reason they actually enjoy life and life's pleasures 
better than the poor, they are greatly mistaken. 

This is true in several respects. First the zest of 
pleasures is lost, if they are procured without trouble. 
Pleasure cannot be bought, pleasure must be felt, and 
the capability of having pleasure depends upon sub- 
jective and not upon objective conditions. The man 
who does not work lessens his capability of enjoyment 
in the same degree as he ceases to be in need of re- 
creations ; -and pleasure which is no recreation after 
serious toil, which is not the satisfaction of a want, 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 277 

soon ceases to be a real pleasure, it becomes flat, stale 
and unprofitable. 

The rich, in order to remain healthy in his spirit, 
in his sentiments, in his recreations and wants, must 
live like the poor man — not like those who are wretched 
and destitute, but like those who work for a living. 
The rich, be they ever so rich, must, for the mere 
sake of their mental and moral health, continue to be 
active, and their activity must have an aim and pur- 
pose, it must be productive of some good, it must be 
work of some kind. 

The pleasures of the poor are, as a rule, richer and 
deeper in color than those of a certain class of typ- 
ically rich people — viz., such rich people who notice- 
ably appear and wish to appear as rich among their 
less fortunate fellow creatures ; and the reason of this 
difference lies deeper still than in a mere lack of exer- 
tion and wholesome activity on the part of the rich. 
One of the most irresistible temptations of the rich, it 
appears, is their eagerness to be distinguished from 
their fellowmen as a special class of men, a peculiar 
and a higher species of the human kind. This is a 
disease which may be called aristocratomania, and it 
is one of the most deplorable diseases, not uncom- 
monly proving fatal to the existence of noble and great 
families. 

Aristocratomania is a disease which erects a barrier 
between special classes of men, not because the one 
is actually better, wiser, more moral, or nobler in 
character than the other, but because the one can in- 
dulge in luxuries in which the other cannot. 

The aristocratomaniac is no aristocrat in the etymo- 
logical and good sense of the word. He is not a better 
man than the rest of mankind ; he is worse, he is a 



278 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

degeneration. His soul instead of being enlarged and. 
widened has shrunk, and in the measure as it has 
shrunk it has lost in human interest, sympathy, and 
love. 

The aristocratomaniac is perhaps charitable, he is 
kind, but his charity and his kindness appear offensive 
as soon as they are properly analysed, for their main 
element is a superstitious condescension. 

The state of aristocratomaniacs is ridiculous and 
pitiable. It is ridiculous because of the vanity of their 
pride ; it is pitiable because of the shriveled condition 
of their souls. The punctilious observance of social 
formalities has taken the place of cordiality and truth- 
fulness. The fashionable ceremonial of society life 
has become the highest rule of conduct, but the real 
sentiments which ought to underlie the forms of social 
intercourse are neglected and forgotten. 

The highest object of the aristocratomaniac is to 
burn incense before the altar of his God — the Puny 
Self which is fed with flattery and vanity. No emotion 
is permitted which would conflict with this deity, for 
great is the Puny Self and he is almighty in the soul 
of the aristocratomaniac. 

Whenever the aristocratomaniac has injured or 
has given offense to his fellowman, the little word : 
''I beg your pardon," which by natural impulse wells 
up in a human soul, remains unspoken because the 
great Puny Self sees in it a humiliation of his majesty. 

Why is there so little warmth in the family life of 
aristocratomaniacs ? Brothers and sisters among the 
poor help one another, they rejoice at their joys and 
bear their woes in common. Does wealth produce a 
chill in the atmosphere so as to freeze out all cordiality 
and goodwill? Does wealth beget dissatisfaction, 



HOMILIE S OF SCIEXCE. 279 

envy, jealousy, ill-will among men? Is the old Nibe- 
lungen-saga true that a curse rests on gold which will 
lead its owner to perdition? Certainly it takes a strong 
character to be wealthy and to remain human, kind- 
natured and broad-minded. The dearest and most 
sacred affections are too easily suffocated among the 
thorns and thistles of worldly goods. Proud of their 
possession of worldly goods the higher goods of truly 
human feelings are lost. As the mother of Christ 
said to Elizabeth : 

" God hath filled the hungry with good things and the rich he 
hath sent empty away." 

There are several causes of aristocratomania, for 
it is a very complicated disease and its symptoms 
show themselves in different waj^s, but one cause ap- 
pears to be its main source and this one cause is the 
lack of solidarity with the interests of aspiring, toiling 
and progressing mankind. That which kindles sym- 
pathies in the hearts of men are common labor, com- 
mon sorrows, common wants and common hopes. 
There is nothing of that between the aristocrato- 
maniac and his fellowmen. He has with other aris- 
tocratomaniacs common joys, common fancies and 
fashions, common comforts and a common pride. But 
these feelings do not kindle sympathies. 

There is a peculiar and a manlike sympathy in the 
dog who drags the cart of his poor master and earns a 
living as his help mate, sharing his master's labor and 
bread. But there is no such amiability in the snarling 
pug who idles away his time in the lap of his idle 
mistress. He is egotistic, impertinent and dissatis- 
fied. He has also become infected with aristocrato- 
mania, for dissatisfaction is one of the most telling 



28o HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

symptoms of the disease. Says Goethe in describing 
the symptoms of aristocratomania : 

" They 're of a noble house, that's very rlear 
Haughty and discontented they appear." 

There are among the poor a class of people who 
either from lack of strength, because the burdens of 
life are heavier than they can bear, or from lack of 
courage and good will, because they do not intend to 
work for a living, become spiteful and bitter. This 
disease is in many respects similar to aristocratomania. 
The aristocratomaniac feels himself exempt from the 
common lot of mortals, the spiteful poor thinks that 
he also ought to be exempt. He has the predisposi- 
tion of becoming an aristocratomaniac, and being 
hopelessly shut out from the class to which his in- 
stinct leads him, he dreams of rising above the crowd 
of common mortals with the help of the masses by 
preaching hatred and destruction. This is the Marrat 
type of the demagogue, vanity, egotism and ambition 
are but too often the motives of him who pretends to 
be a reformer, imitating Christ in his denunciations 
only but not in his charity, love and self-renunciation. 
One of the most prominent social agitators actually 
exposed his main spring of action in quoting Virgil's 
verse : 

" Flectere si nequeo superos Acheronta movebo. 

[Can I not bend the Gods, I'll stir the under world.] 

Moral health cannot be found in the aristocrato- 
maniac nor in the would-be aristocratomaniac, but in 
the patient and plodding worker, be he rich or poor. 
He who has risen in his imagination above mankind 
and the sorrows of mankind has cut himself loose from 
the tree of humanity. The fate of aristocratomaniac 
families as a rule is sealed. They are doomed. Life 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 281 

is activity and wherever life ceases to be activity, it 
dries up and withers away. 

Is this perhaps the meaning of Christ when he said 
that 

"A rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. 
"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle 
than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." 

These passages are strong and what they teach 
should not remain unheeded. There are two lessons 
which they teach, one of warning and the other of 
comfort. The warning is for the rich not to erect a 
barrier between themselves and humanity, not to al- 
low their souls to be shriveled by wealth and pride of 
class, for the poor, not to be blinded by the advan- 
tages of wealth ; wealth is not happiness and does not 
convey happiness. The real contents of life, its mean- 
ing, its import and its worth cannot be expressed in 
dollars and cents. We have to create the actual 
values of life ourselves. 

But there is in Christ's words about the rich also 
a solace. The solace is for those who live their lives 
in the sweat of their brows. Life's strength is labor 
and sorrow. Let us not expect a different fate and 
we shall the more easily be able to meet the duties ot 
life and to conform to the unalterable laws of mental 
and moral growth. 

Let us not lose time with complaints, but let us be 
like Horatio : 

" As one, in suffering all that suffers nothing, 
A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards 
Has ta'en with equal thanks." 

Let us preserve the elasticity of our minds and if we 
have to drudge, if we are surrounded with difBculties 
and disappointments^ we shall bear them gladly and 



282 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

grow the stronger through their resistance. It is said 
that the palm tree, if weighed down by some heavy 
stone grows the more stately and the more straight 
raising its crown above all the other trees which either 
do not experience any resistance, or if they did, would 
not have the strength to overcome its pressure. 



SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM. 



Social reformers and the enthusiastic prophets of 
a new mankind tell us that when their dreams are 
realised a radical change will take place in the nature 
of man. The coming man will lose all the vicious 
features of the present man ; universal happiness will 
reign all the world over and humanity will become a 
homogeneous mass either of independent sovereigns 
or of well adapted members of society. The former 
extreme is called anarchism, the latter socialism or 
nationalism ; and the exponents of either view expect 
from the application of their panacea a cure for all so- 
cial diseases and the institution of a millennium upon 
earth. 

How vain are the endeavors to construct an ideal 
Utopia either of an individualistic or socialistic hu- 
manity ! Does it not prove that sociology is still in 
its infancy? Instead of studying facts, we invent and 
propose schemes. 

The mistake made by anarchists as well as by so- 
cialists is that individualism and socialism are treated 
as regulative principles while in reality they are not 
principles ; they are the two factors of society. Neither 
of them can be made its sole principle of regulation. 
You might as well propose to regulate gravity on earth 



284 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

by making either the centrifugal or the centripetal 
force the supreme and only law, abolishing the one 
for the benefit of the other. 

Individualism and socialism are factors and cannot 
be made principles. This means : Individualism is 
the natural aspiration of every being to be itself, it is 
the inborn tendency of every creature to grow and de- 
velop in agreement with its own nature. We might 
say that this endeavor is right, but it is more correct 
to say that it is a fact ; it is natural and we can as 
little abolish it as we can decree by an act of legisla- 
ture that fire shall cease to burn or that water shall 
cease to quench fire. Socialism on the other hand is a 
fact also. ^^ I " am not alone in the world ; there are my 
neighbors and my life is intimately interwoven with 
their lives. My helpfulness to them and their help- 
fulness to me constitute the properly human element 
of my soul and are perhaps ninety-nine one hundredths 
of my whole self. The more human society progresses, 
the more numerous and varied become the relations 
among the members of society, and the truth dawns 
upon us that no advantage accrues to an individual 
by the suppression of the individuality of his fellows. 
First he, in so doing, never succeeds for good, and 
secondly the mutual advantage will in the. end always 
be greater to all concerned the more the factor of in- 
dividualism in others remains respected. Human 
society as it naturally grows is the result of both 
factors, of individualism and of socialism. 

The anarchist proposes to make individualism, and 
the nationalist to make socialism the main principle 
of regulation for society. Are not these one-eyed re- 
formers utterly in the dark as to the nature of the so- 
cial problem ? The social problem demands an inquiry 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 285 

into the natural laws of the social growth in order to 
do voluntarily what according to the laws of nature 
must after all be the final outcome of evolution. By 
consciously and methodically adapting ourselves to 
the laws of nature, we shall save much waste, avoid 
great pains, and acquire the noble satisfaction that we 
have built upon a rock : and no innovation is possible 
except it be a gradual evolution from the present state 
and the result of the factors which are at present active. 

Socialism and anarchism are the two extremes, and 
all social parties contain both principles in different 
proportions. The republicans and the democrats rep- 
resent the same opposition of centripetal and centri- 
fugal forces in their politics. Party platforms are ex- 
ponents of the forces that manifest themselves in the 
growth of society. They may be either symptoms of 
special diseases or indicators of a wholesome reaction 
against special diseases. A movement may be needed 
now in the direction of anarchism and now in that of 
socialism. We may now want a regulation of certain 
affairs in which the public safety and interest are con- 
cerned : for instance, in giving licenses to physicians 
and druggists, in the supervision of banks, in rail- 
road matters, etc., etc.; and then again we may want 
a greater freedom from government interference. The 
temporary needs as they are more or less felt will swell 
the one or the other party. 

It would be a misfortune, however, if one of these 
partisan forces could rush to the extreme and realise 
the social or anarchical ideal before its opposite had 
been deeply rooted at the same time in the hearts of 
the people. Social institutions not based upon liberty, 
or government interference to the suppression of free 
competition, would be exactly as insupportable as an- 



286 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

archy among lawless people who have no regard for 
the rights of others. But there is no danger that either 
extreme would entirely disappear to leave the whole 
field to the other alone. The law of inertia holds good 
in the psychical and sociological world no less than in 
the physical. 

As the present man is the man of the past only 
further developed, so the coming man will be the 
present man only wiser, nobler, purer. There is no 
chance for a radical change of the nature of man or of 
the constitution of society. However there is a chance 
and more than a chance, there is a fully justified 
hope and a rational faith that man will continue to 
progress. Nature's cruel work of incessantly lopping 
off the constantly new appearing vicious outgrowths 
of human life through the survival of the fittest, and 
by an extirpation of the unfit, will in the future be 
performed by man himself, from the start, as soon as 
he has discovered the conditions under which these 
outgrowths become impossible. 

Human society will in the future be more anar- 
chistic in the same measure as it will be more social- 
istic. Not that socialistic institutions or laws will 
through an external pressure abolish competition and 
impose upon the individual more socialistic relations ; 
nor that the abolition of laws will restrict government 
interference so as to give more elbow-room to individ- 
ual liberty. Individual liberty will increase at the 
same ratio as the social instincts of mutual justice 
will become more than at present a part of every in- 
dividual man. This has been the law of social pro- 
gress in the past, it has made the republican institu- 
tions of the present possible and this law will hold 
good for the future also. Anarchism could be real- 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 287 

ised only where the laws of justice were inscribed in 
the hearts of all men, so that every man were a law 
unto himself; and perfect socialism can be realised 
only where every individual's greatest joy consisted 
in the ambition to serve the community. The former 
would be a state of altruistic individualists and the 
latter one of individualistic altruists. Both states are 
ideals and both are represented by more or less con- 
sistent parties which for the attainment of the same 
aim propose opposite means. These parties are 
exponents of certain forces that manifest themselves 
in the growth of society. It is well to understand 
both ideals and to sympathise with both, although the 
one as much as the other may be equally impossible, 
for evolution is a constant and a simultaneous approx- 
mation to both ideals. 



LOOKING FORWARD. 



Human progress depends upon the dreams of en- 
thusiasts. The inventor, the discoverer, and the 
reformer are dreamers, who prophet-Hke see in their 
imagination things that other mortals know not of. 
Every one of such men might very well say : ''I had 
a dream which was not all a dream." Their dreams 
become realities and many such dreams are common- 
place facts to us now. Indeed civilization consists 
of such realized dreams. How useful are these 
dreams ! 

We call dreams which are not all dreams, ideals. 
Why is not every dream as useful as a genuine ideal ? 
Because the stuff of which the ideal is made — I mean 
the genuine ideal only — is taken from the actual state 
of things as they exist in reality^ and handled accord- 
ing to the laws of nature. 

James Watt took iron and steel and steam, and 
made them act according to their nature. He com- 
bined certain realities. He applied natural laws, and 
lo ! the combination of his thoughts revolutionized the 
world, and lifted all humanity upon a higher level than 
it had occupied before. The genuine ideal is a dream 
that genius shapes out of reality. 

We have become reverent toward the dreamer 
because of the usefulness of certain dreams. Dream- 
ers, it appears, command our respect even if they 



HOMILIES OF SCIEXCE. 289 

are but dreamers. A certain man once learned at 
school that our atmosphere exercises a constant pres- 
sure of fourteen pounds upon every square inch of our 
body — constituting a total pressure of about forty 
hundred- weights upon the surface of the skin of an 
average adult person. This man had a dream that he 
lived upon a planet without an atmosphere. People 
felt so free and easy, in the absence of all pressure, 
that they moved about like winged angels. He told 
his dream to his neighbors, he wrote it down and pub- 
lished it, and it is the one hundred and ninety-first 
or second edition that is now being sold. Humanity 
builds altars to the dreamer, because he is a dreamer; 
he had a vision. 

Every man that works for the progress of the 
human race has and ought to have our sincerest sym- 
pathy. We, all of us, should know that society in 
many respects, — perhaps in most respects, — is not 
what it ought to be. We have abolished slavery, but 
the laborer is not as yet the free, and independent, and 
intelligent man he ought to be ; not as yet is the em- 
ployer the humane, and intelligent, and well educated 
man he ought to be. The people perish from want 
of knowledge ; it is knowledge that will make the 
laborer free, it is knowledge that will make the em- 
ployer humane. Knowledge, if it is knowledge at all, 
means an acquaintance with facts as they really are, 
with natural laws and sociological laws, which latter 
are just as much laws of nature as gravitation or other 
natural laws are. And it is truth only that can make 
us free. 

There comes a dreamer who Hatly proposes to 
abolish the law of gravitation. He explains in a 
marvelously lucid sketch that every man who falls and 



ago HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

breaks his leg, falls only because of the law of gravi- 
tation. Things are heavy because matter gravitates 
toward the centre of the earth. All the troubles 
of transportation are inconveniences due to gravity. 
There is no misfortune or annoyance that has not its 
root in this vilest of all natural institutions — gravity. 
Come therefore and let us abolish gravitation ! 

A dreamer like that is called an idealist, and great 
respect is paid him by the unkowing many. It is diffi- 
cult to state whether such a dreamer, and all those in- 
fatuated by his dream, are to be envied or to be pitied 
for their illusions. 

Mr. Bellamy depicts a state of society where there 
is no competition. Competition is the struggle for 
life among peaceful human beings. It is the struggle 
for life that created man and human society and all 
progress of the human race. But then there is much 
misery that arises from the struggle for life. The 
lesson that life teaches is, in my opinion, the admo- 
nition to make the struggle for life more humane. Let 
us therefore educate the growing generation better 
than the former generations, let us adapt ourselves 
to nature, let us break down artificial barriers be- 
tween man and man, that the struggle for life may 
become a fair and honest fight for progress, that 
our competition may be an honest endeavor to do 
better and more useful work. Let us be fair to our 
enemies and to our competitors, and we shall soon 
find out, that the abler they are, the stronger and 
fiercer their competition is, the better it will be for us. 
They help us to progress, they force us to progress, 
however much worry they cause, we would certainly 
not be better off without them. 

Why should the relation between employer and 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 291 

employee be that of a master to his slave ? It is 
partly nov/, and let us hope that in the future it will 
always be, looked upon as the co operation of a worker 
with his co-workers, in which the one bears the main 
risk and will get a proportionate share of the profits, 
if there are any, while the others earn their fixed 
wages. Why should we abolish the principle of free 
enterprise, which encourages thrift, and progress, and 
invention, because there are some imperfections in its 
application ? 

In certain branches co-operation may, and I believe 
it will, become more practical than it is to-day. Such 
co-operation will in each case have to be based upon the 
freewill and assent of every independent individual, but 
it cannot — even not by the vote of a majority — be im- 
posed upon the whole nation. And if it could, it 
would not work. It would change all trades into in- 
dustrial armies and a few bosses would have to run 
and regulate the whole co-operative business of the 
nation. It would transform our present life of free en- 
terprise and competition into an enormous peniten- 
tiary, only very humanely instituted — supposing that 
all convicts would willingly submit to the rules of the 
institute. The imperial army as well as the imperial 
post office and railroad service of Germany are a par- 
tial realization of Nationalism. 

We want more chances for labor, more elbow-room 
for the courageous, especially for the poor. It is true, 
we demand that the license of the unprincipled be 
checked, but we do not want the liberty of anybody 
to be curtailed, be he a millionaire or an unskilled 
navvy. 

Mr. Bellamy proposes to abolish the struggle for 
life. He has told us in his little book all the advan- 



292 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE, 

tages of the scheme, and they are many. We can dis- 
pense with all the tedious inventions of civilization ; 
we need no more private property, no money, no re- 
wards for industry.. But with the evils of competition, — 
which has produced our civilization, — we shall abolish 
the most divine blessings : human freedom, indepen- 
dence, responsibility, and above all self-reliance. 

We are confident that '' the present order may be 
replaced by one distinctly nobler and more humane." 
But the new order of things cannot be established by 
the proposed panacea of Nationalism and the abolition 
of competition. The new order must grow and 
evolve out of the present state of things, not other- 
wise than our present civilization developed out of 
savagery. In the new order of things we hope all un- 
necessary struggle will be avoided ; we shall have less 
waste and a minimum of friction ; yet the law of com- 
petition will remain in a future and better state of so- 
ciety just as powerful as it ever was since time im- 
memorial and as it is to-day. 

Nature has not designed man to live for the mere 
enjoyment of life. Nature under penalty of degenera- 
tion sternly demands and enforces a constant pro- 
gress through struggle and work and sacrifice. And 
those who devote themselves to the pursuit of happi- 
ness, will soon find that they are following an ignis 
fatuus that leads them astray into the imperviable 
marshes of perdition. If a social reformer promises a 
millennium of happiness, be on your guard, for in 
that case he is misleading you. Look at his schemes 
with a critical mind and you will see that his Utopia 
is a fool's paradise. 

Mr. Bellamy's book and its popularity is one of the 
most ominous symptoms of our time. It is an outcry 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 293 

for the satisfaction of material wants and for pleas- 
ures ; a hunger for panem et circenses to be provided 
by the government, by the nation. The average cit- 
izens of Rome during the Punic wars were by no means 
rich, but they possessed an indomitable love of inde- 
pendence, and the Republic at that time rested upon 
a sound foundation. But when the Romans cried 
for panem et circenses, Liberty died and Caesar ap- 
peared. Caesar gave them pane77i et circenses, and the 
price they had to pay for the trouble he took, is known 
in history. The people who want to be taken care of 
and catered to with bread and pleasures, have for- 
feited their claim to freedom. 

"Looking Backward" proposes to abolish the 
social law of gravitation which indeed causes many 
troubles in life but which at the same time produced 
and still produces our civilization. Thus the book is 
trul}^ a looking backward to the primeval state of bar- 
barism. 

Let us cease to dream the useless dreams of abol- 
ishing the laws of nature. Let us rather abolish the 
artificial barriers between the so-called higher and 
lower classes. Give the poorest a chance to acquire 
as good an education as the richest command. Fa- 
cilitate the opportunities of labor so that the indus- 
trious need not go begging for work. Thus we shall 
break down the hindrances that prevent progress, and 
in adapting ourselves to the laws of nature we shall 
better be prepared for a true and useful Looking 
Forward. 



WOMAN EMANCIPATION. 



One of the most important and at the same time 
noblest of our present ideals is the emancipation of 
woman. Woman is the weaker sex, because nature 
has destined her strength to be sacrificed for the per- 
petuation of the race. Woman represents the future 
of humanity ; the imm.ortality of mankind is entrusted 
to her. The burdens of life are upon the whole so di- 
vided that man must struggle with the adversities of 
conditions, while woman must suffer all the throes 
and woes which are the price of the continuance of 
human existence. He is the more active fighter, the 
worker, the hero; she is the passive endurer, the toiler, 
the martyr. He has under these conditions grown 
strong, physically and. intellectually ; she has grown 
noble. The activity of each being shapes its organ- 
ism and models its character. Thus the virtues of 
man became daring courage, concentration of thought, 
and enterprising energy ; the virtues of woman be- 
came abnegation of self, patience, and purity of 
heart. 

Woman, being the weaker sex, has been and to a 
great extent is still held in subjection to the power 
and jurisdiction of the stronger sex. It is true that 
among cultured people the rudeness of this relation, 
has disappeared. The husband has ceased to be the 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 295 

tyrant of the household. He respects the indepen- 
dence of his wife and prefers to have in her a loving 
comrade rather than a pliant slave. Nevertheless 
progress is slow. It is perhaps not so much oppres- 
sion by single persons as by traditional habits that is 
still weighing heavily upon woman, retarding the final 
emancipation of her sex. 

Prof. E. D. Cope has written an article on the 
economical relation between the sexes * in which he 
emphasises woman's dependence on the support and 
protection of man. Professor Cope explains satisfac- 
torily the present state of society, but he leaves out of 
sight the question whether this present state has to 
continue forever. His article is a scholarly investiga- 
tion of existent conditions, but he does not touch the 
problem whether this is the only possible natural state 
or a special phase in the development of human sex- 
relations. We believe that the present phase is to be 
followed by another phase securing to woman a better, 
nobler, and more dignified position. 

It may be conceded, as a matter of historical state- 
ment, that in the struggle for life women had to de- 
pend upon men for protection and sustenance. Yet it 
must not be forgotten that men in their turn also had 
to depend upon women. What are men without 
mothers and wives ? How helpless is an old widower, 
and in spite of his so-called liberty how poor is the 
life of an old bachelor. 

Professor Cope does not overlooK this point, yet 
he maintains that women as a rule cannot make a liv- 
ing ; he maintains that whenever they do, it is an ex- 
ception and this is the reason why they must look 
for sustenance and protection from the stronger sex. 

* The Monist, No. i, p. 38. 



2g6 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

Granted that this has been so ; also granted that many 
women had to marry for this sole reason, must we 
therefore conclude that this wretched state of things 
is to continue forever? It may be true that there was 
a time when serfdom was an unavoidable state for a 
certain class of people who in a state of liberty would 
not make a decent living for themselves; slavery per- 
haps was a greater blessing to them than to their mas- 
ters. Would that be a reason for continuing slavery 
in a higher state of social conditions ? 

The woman question has originated through the 
very progress of civilisation. In order to make a liv- 
ing a human being has no longer to depend upon 
physical strength, but mostly upon mental capacities, 
nay, more so upon moral qualities. Sense of duty is 
more important than muscle power, and sometimes 
even than skill. The time has come that at least in 
many branches a well educated woman can do the 
same work as a man, and she is no more dependent 
upon man for sustenance and protection. 

This fact will not alter the natural relation of sex. 
Our women will not cease to marry, to bear and to 
raise children. Yet it will alter their position in this 
relation. They will no longer marry for the mere sake 
of protection, but for love alone. They will then enter 
marriage on equal terms; and thus they will obtain a 
more dignified place in human society. 

It cannot be denied that woman is different from 
man. The average man is superior in some respects, 
and the average woman is superior in other respects. 
Neither man nor woman is the perfect man. True 
humanity is not represented by either. True humanity 
consists in their union, and in the consequences of their 
union, namely in the family. 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 297 

Woman's emancipation does not involve any de- 
traction from man's rights or duties. Man will not 
suffer from it, on the contrary, he will profit. It will 
raise our family life upon a higher stage and man will 
be as much a gainer in this bargain as the slave-holder 
who can employ free labor easier and cheaper than 
keep slaves. As no one would wish to re-establish 
slavery now, so in a later period no man would ever 
care to have the old state recalled when women mar- 
ried mainly for the sake of sustenance and protection. 

Let me add that woman emancipation is slowly 
but assuredly accomplished, not by acts of legislature, 
but by a natural growth which no conservatism can 
stop. Acts of legislature giving more liberty and 
chances of making a living to woman, will not be the 
cause, they will come in consequence of a true woman 
emancipation. There are man}^ steps taken in a wrong 
direction. Efforts are wasted especially by some over- 
enthusiastic women in making women like men, in- 
stead of making men and women equal. These erro- 
neous aspirations are injurious to the cause, yet after 
all they cannot ruin it. There is an ideal of a higher, 
more elevated and a better womanhood, and this ideal 
(although it is ofteti misunderstood) will be accom- 
plished without the destruction of the womanly in 
woman. 



DO WE WANT A REVOLUTION? 



"Do WE want a Revolution ? " is the subject of an 
article by Mr. Morrison I. Swift which appeared in 
No. 1 66 of The Open Court. The question is answered 
in the affirmative ; Mr. Swift declares : We want a 
revolution. 

Mr. Morrison I. Swift is a young man and full of 
earnest enthusiasm for social justice and the elevation 
of the poor. He makes himself the attorney of the 
oppressed and hurls his shafts of indignation against 
the oppressors. He appears as the prophet of revolu- 
tionary reform, indicting a number of rich men, "be- 
cause," he says, "they make our lives hard and 
dull." 

Their crime, he declares, consists in being "willing 
in the present hour of enlightenment to accept the 
colossal advantages their place in an irrational system 
gives them, to use these perfectly prodigious powers 
selfishly." Not the slightest proof is adduced for this 
wholesale indictment. The indiscrimination in his col- 
lection of several well known names proves that Mr. 
Swift does not clearly know himself what they are 
guilty of. Are they arraigned for selfishness ? Some 
of them are very active for the public good. Are they 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE, 299 

arraigned for possessing wealth ? While none among 
them is poor, not every one of them is so extraordinary 
rich as ^r. Swift seems to imagine. Nor does the 
plaintiff indicate what these criminals ought to do in 
order to escape the condemnation of selfishness. Per- 
haps he would repeat the demand of Christ : '' Go and 
sell all that thou hast and give to the poor and thou 
shalt have treasure in heaven ? " 

Plaintiff is a philanthropist and he kindly urges in 
extenuation that the rich are *' victims of the system 
like the rest, victims of a sorry state of human nature. " 
The personal indictment of these men seems to rest 
on the fact that they do not use their power to over- 
throw the social order. And this appears to Mr. Swift 
as the one thing that is needed. Having realised that 
there are iniquities and sufferings he is determined to 
promote revolution, because ''life would be dishonor- 
able on any other terms." 

Mr. Swift undoubtedly hopes for a better system, 
which he supposes will come after the breakdown of 
the present system. He may be a nationalist or an 
anarchist, I do not know ; and it matters little. Yet 
it is certain that rash youth only can so wantonly, al- 
though with best and purest motives, clamor for a 
revolution. Putting the question to himself whether 
or not we must be revolutionists, Mr. Swift declares 
*'it is easy to make his choice." 

Does Mr. Swift know what a revolution is ? A rev- 
olution is a breakdown of society. It is not a building 
up, it is a tearing down. If is not evolution, but it is 
dissolution. 

A revolution is a great public calamity which falls 
equally heavy on the rich and on the poor. Perhaps 
it falls heavier upon the poor, because as a rule the)^ 



300 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

have less education and are ignorant of the course of 
events. The facts of the French revolution speak loud 
enough. Are they now forgotten ? To every* rich man 
who was guillotined hundreds of poor met with the 
same fate, and thousands were actually starved to 
death. 

A revolution is like a deluge that, the dam being 
broken, sweeps over a valley. The deluge will drown 
the rich as well as the poor. It will often happen that 
a rich man may be drowned as well as a poor man ; but 
after all, the rich man if he be warned in time, has 
better chances to escape. 

Who will profit by revolutions ? Not the laborer, 
he will be starved ; not the employer of labor, he will 
be ruined. There is one class of men that will profit. 
It is the sharper ; he whose business flourishes while 
and because all the world is covered with misfortune. 
There are people who undertake to fish in muddy wa- 
ters. These people are the only ones that are bene- 
fited by public disturbances, calamities, and revolu- 
tions. 

Several months ago I discussed the eventuality of 
a revolution with a leading anarchist of Chicago. I 
do by no means agree with anarchism ; nor did this 
anarchist agree with my views, but he most emphat- 
ically joined me in denouncing the superstition so pre- 
valent among many would-be reformers, that revolu- 
tion can bring any salvation to society. He said, 
''When I was young and rash, I believed in revolution 
and hoped for a revolution ; I thought to arrive at a 
higher state of society by a bee line road. But since 
I have seen more of life, I have ceased to believe in 
physical force. I then believed that society could be 
pulled up by the roots and pitched over the fence, and 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 301 

a new social machine, contrary to that which is, put 
in its place. I now see, that society is a slow growth, 
and the best we can do is to remove those special 
privileges, empowering the few to rob the many. Rev- 
olution, it is true, cannot be condemned under any 
and all circumstances. Revolution is, like war, always 
an evil, but in exceptional cases, it mjay happen to be 
the lesser evil. Revolution becomes necessary as soon 
as evolution has become an absolute necessity. Yet 
even then its necessity must be deplored, because all 
violence, bloodshed, and Vv^ars debase the higher sen- 
timents of the race, and destroy the sanctity of human 
life ; the progress which comes through peace, though 
slow it be, is the most certain and enduring." 

There is but one way of improving the condition of 
the laboring classes ; that is by evolution. We must 
enforce a better position of the workers by legal means, 
not with the bullet, but with the ballot. The road is 
slower, but it leads b}^ and by to the desired aim. 

The bee line road of revolution will not bring us 
nearer to a realisation of our ideals. In order to reach 
a better state of society by the slow process of evolu- 
tion, we must educate mankind up to it, we must teach 
them a higher morality and a respect for law. 

What a terrible error it is to preach justice and 
recommend the overthrow not of this or that law only, 
but of all laws and of the whole order of society. 

Society is not an artificial system that can be con- 
structed with arbitrariness. Society is an organism 
and the laws of its development are similar to those of 
living creatures, of plants and of animals. You can 
promote the growth of a tree, by digging round its 
stem, by watering the roots and pruning the dead 
branches in its crown, nay, you may inoculate a tree 



302 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

SO that indeed the thorns may be made to bear figs or 
grapes. But if you pull out the whole tree, you will 
have to begin quite anew, and it will take a long while 
until it has reached that state again in which it is now. 

Incendiary speeches are cheap means for agitators 
to become popular with the uneducated among our 
laboring classes. Yet I hope to see the time when 
our laborers will hoot at the demagogue who attempts 
to excite them with preaching hatred and ill will. 

Yet the incendiary speeches of demagogues should 
not be ignored by the rich. We should recommend 
them to the rich for a careful perusal. There is cer- 
tainly something wrong in a state of society in which 
young men, enthusiastic for justice, openly clamor for 
a revolution. 

We advise the rich as well as the poor to weigh 
carefully Mr. Swift's proposition, not because we agree 
with him in the justice of a revolution, or in the ad- 
visability of preparing and preaching a revolution ; on 
the contrary, because we should consider a revolution 
as the greatest public calamity, the evil consequences 
of which cannot be all foreseen. The probability, \v. 
my mind, is that the final result of a great revolution 
in the United States, would be the downfall of the 
republic and the establishment of an empire. A revo- 
lution, so far as I can see, will bring us no liberty but 
serfdomi. -^ 

It is a law of nature that if a nation cannot govern 
itself, a usurper will keep order in that nation, and 
every revolution in a republic is a sign that the citi- 
zens are not able in a peaceful way to administer their 
public affairs. 

The rich therefore, should heed the cry of alarm. 
They should consider that a revolution becomes an in- 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. ' 303 

evitable necessity as soon as the discontent of the poor 
in a country has reached a certain height at which 
their yoke appears to them unbearable. 

Our society is by no means free from grievances, 
although they have not yet reached their fill. We 
should beware of the very beginning and mind all the 
sj^mptoms of dissatisfaction. The greater the patience 
of the oppressed proves to be, the more formidable 
will be the outbreak of their indignation. 

It is not good to build barriers between man and 
man; as says the prophet Jeremiah: ''Let not the 
wise man glory in his wisdom ; neither let the mighty 
man glory in his might ; let not the rich man glory in 
his riches." And the apostle Paul writes to Timothy : 
''Charge them that are rich in this world, that they 
be not high-minded nor trust in uncertain riches." 

The duties of those that have great possessions are 
greater than the duties of the poor. The more power 
a man has, the more im.perative is his obligation to 
be just in all his dealing with his neighbors. The 
citizens of a republic should not attempt to make a 
caste of wealth ; and ought to abhor all oppression of 
the poor. The employer must show his own inde- 
pendence and his sense of independence by respecting 
the independence of his employees. When weighing 
the worth of a man, let us not consider the amount of 
his property but the manliness and honesty of his 
character. 

Is there any sense in admiring the aristocratic 
habits which have become fashionable with so many 
of our wealthy families ? Let us exercise, ourselves, 
and teach our children to exercise, simplicity. Let us 
honor the democratic principles which so well become 
the citizens of a republic, and the mere idea of a rev- 



304 * HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

olution will become a ridiculous bugbear. Says Robert 
Burns : 

" Then let us pray that come it may, — 
As come it will for a' that,— 
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth, 
May bear the gree, and a' that. 
For a' that, and a' that, 
Its coming yet for a' that, — 
When man to man the warld' o'er, 
Shall brothers be for a' that." 



THE AMERICAN IDEAL; 



The United States of North America is a nation 
without a name. Poets hail our country Columbia, 
and Europeans call us simply Americans. Yet these 
appellations are not, properly speaking, names. At- 
tempts have been made to provide the nation with 
a name, yet so far all the attempts have proved 
failures. 

We need not care about a name. When we need a 
name, it will be given us. Much more difficult would 
it be to give ideals to a nation ; yet luckily, although 
we are a nation without a name, we are not a nation 
without ideals. 

We have high and great ideals, although they are 
neglected and forgotten by many ; and some of our 
most influential politicians treacherously trample them 
under foot. We can say without boasting that our 
ideals are the noblest, the broadest, the loftiest of 
any in the world. 

Our ideals are sublime because they are human- 
itarian, and thus this great republic of the West has 
become a bulwark against the evil powers of inherited 
errors and false conservatism. So long as it shall re- 

* This article first appeared in Avterica of Chicago. 



3o6 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

main faithful to the principles upon which its consti- 
tution is founded, this republic will be a promise and 
a hope for the progress of mankind. 

There is a prejudice in Europe against the ideals 
of America. It is fashionable in the old countries to 
represent Europe as the continent of ideal aspirations 
while America is described as the land where the 
dollar is almighty. Germans most of all are apt to 
praise the fatherland as the home of the ideal while 
the new world is supposed to be the seat of realistic 
avarice and egotism. 

This is neither fair nor true, for there are as many 
and as great sacrifices made for pure ideal ends on 
this side of the Atlantic as on the other side. We 
maintain that Europe is less ideal than America. If 
impartial statistics could be compiled of all the gifts 
and legacies made for the public benefit, for artistic, 
scientific, and religious purposes, the American figures 
would by far exceed those of all Europe. In Germany 
the government has to do everything. It has to build 
the churches, to endow the universities, to create in- 
dustrial and art institutions. If the government would 
not do it, all ideal work would be neglected, science 
would have to go begging, and the church would 
either pass out of existence or remain for a long time 
in a most wretched and undignified position. This 
state of affairs is not at all due to a lack of idealism 
among the people of the old world, but is a consequence 
of the paternal care of the government. The govern- 
ment provides for the ideal wants of its subjects ; so 
they get accustomed to being taken care of. There 
is scarcely anybody who considers it his duty to work 
for progress, except where he cannot help it, in his 
private business, in industrial and commercial lines. 



HOMILIES OF SCIEXCE. 307 

Scarcely anybody thinks of making a sacrifice for art, 
science, or the general welfare, and science and gen- 
eral welfare are looked upon as the business of kings 
and magistrates. 

We live in a republic and the ideals of republican 
institutions are a sacred inheritance from the founders 
of this nation. We are no subjects of a czar or em- 
peror, for in a republic every citizen is a king ; and 
the government is the employe of the citizens. The 
highest officer of our government, the president of 
the United States is proud, when leaving the White 
House, of having tried to be a faithful public servant 
promoting the general welfare according to his best 
ability. 

It is true that we are far — very far, from having 
realised our ideals. Our politics are full of unworthy 
actions, and many things happen of which we are or 
should be ashamed that they are possible at all in the 
home of the brave and the free. It is true also that 
many of our laws, far from expressing a spirit of justice 
and goodwill towards all mankind, are dictated by 
greed and egotism ; further it is true that national 
chauvinism and national vanity go so far as to make 
any, even the sincerest, criticism of our national faults 
odious. Nevertheless we have our ideals and our 
ideals may be characterised in the one word humani- 
tarianism. 

How many there are who believe in the beneficial 
influence of petty advantages, unfairly gained by giv- 
ing up the higher standard of justice and right ! How 
many there are who suppress the cosmopolitan spirit 
of our ideals and foster a narrow exclusiveness which 
they are pleased to call patriotism. Their sort of pa- 



3o8 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

triotism will never benefit our country but will work 
it serious injury. 

Our fourth of July orators pronounce too many and 
too brazen flatteries upon our accomplishments, and 
speak too little about our duties, when they represent 
us as that nation upon the development of which the 
future fate of humanity depends. There is too much 
talk about our freedom, as if no liberty had existed be- 
fore the declaration of independence. What a degrada- 
tion of the characters of our ancestry ! Was it not love 
of liberty that set the sails of the Mayflower, was it not 
love of liberty that drove so many exiles over the At- 
lantic. Did the love of liberty not pulsate in the hearts 
of all the nationalities that make up our nation ? Were 
not the Saxons, the Teutons, the sons of Erin, the Swiss, 
the French, the Italians, jealous of their liberties? 
does not their history prove the pride they took in 
preserving their rights and securing the dignity of 
their manhood ? Love of liberty fought the battle of 
the Teutoburg forest even before the Saxon sepa- 
rated from his German brothers to found the English 
nation. Love of liberty was described by Tacitus as 
the national trait of the barbarians of the North whose 
institutions and customs and language have with cer- 
tain modifications devolved upon the present genera- 
tion now living in America. 

Let us not undervalue our forefathers for the sake of 
a local patriotism ; let us fully recognise the truth that 
we have inherited the most valuable treasures of our 
national ideals from former ages. In thus understand- 
ing how our civic life is rooted in the farthest past, we 
shall at the same time look with confidence into the 
darkness of future eras. Our present state is but a 
stepping stone to the realisation of higher ideals, for 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 309 

the possible progress of mankind is infinite and our 
very shortcomings remind us of the work that is still 
to be done. 

Let us cherish that kind of patriotism which takes 
pride in the humanitarian ideals of our nation. 

With our humanitarian ideals we shall stand, and 
without them we shall fall. So long as our shores re- 
main the place of refuge for the persecuted, so long 
as our banner appears as the star of hope to the op- 
pressed, and so long as our politics, our customs, our 
principles rouse the sympathy of liberty-loving men, 
our nation will grow and prosper ; the spirit of progress 
will find here its home and the human race will reach 
a higher stage of development than was ever attained 
upon earth. 

This great aim, however, can be attained only by 
a strong faith in the rightfulness and final triumph of 
the ideal, by perseverance and earnest struggle ; by a 
holy zeal for justice in small as well as in great things; 
by intrepid maintenance of personal independence and 
freedom for every loyal citizen ; and by the rigid ob- 
servance of all duties political and otherwise so that 
the electors cast their votes in honesty and the elected 
fill their offices with integrity. 

Historical investigations proved that the golden 
age must not be sought in the past. May we not 
hope that it lies before us in the future? Without be- 
lieving in a millennium upon earth, in a state of ideal 
perfection, or in a heaven of unmixed happiness, we 
yet confidently trust that we can successfully work for 
the realisation of the golden age in our beloved home 
on the western continent — where the conditions are 
such as to leave us only these two alternatives : either 
the uneducated classes (among whom we have to count 



3IO. HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 

some of our richest citizens) will with their ballots and 
their influence in politics ruin the countr}^, or they 
will, perhaps after many dearly bought experiences, 
be educated up to a higher moral plane. 

Let us work for the American Ideal and let us hope 
for the future. 



INDEX. 



Abolition of dogmas, 29. 

Achilles, 119. 

Adaptation and evolution, 37. 

Adversary, Understand your, 257. 

^schylus, 117, 119. 

Agitators, 302. 

Agnostic, 214. 

Agnostic, The orthodox and the, 204. 

Agnosticism, Three attitudes of, 214, 

215. 
Agreement between, 23. 
Ahriman and Ormuzd, 94. 
Amelioration, 142. 
America, Ideals of, 305, 306. 
Amos, 235, 236. 
Anarchism and Socialism, 283, 285, 

286, 287. 
Anarchy, 139. 

Angels and ethics, The, 274, 275. 
Antinomies, 113, 114. 
Antisthenes, 80, 
Aristocracy of the mind, 196. 
Aristocratic habits, 303. 
Aristocratomania, 277, 278, 279. 
Armour, Mr., 228. 
Asaph, 272. 
Athanasius, 92. 
Atheism, 90, 104, 112, 193. 
Atheism and dogmatic theism, 92. 
Authority and freethought, 192. 
Authority, God — to regulate action, 79. 

Backbone and the struggle for life, 

244. 
Bacon, 107. 
Baer, von, 44. 
Baldur, 72, 73. 
Beam in the eye, the, 198. 
Belief in immortality, 175, 176 
Bellamy, 290, 291, 292. 
Bible, 75, 76, T], 221, 223. 



Bible and ethics, 222. 

Birth, 14. 

Birth and death, 159, 160. 

Blind guides, 199. 

Bruno, Giordano, 230. 

Bryant, quotation from, 162. 

Buddha, 123, 125, 126, 143, 146, 171. 

Buddhism, 143, 146, 148, 150, 171. 

Burial, 14, 

Burns, Robt., 304. 

Cassar, 262, 293. 

Calvin, 30. 

Ceremonies, 33, 

Changes, 23. 

Chastity, 262. 

Christ, 6, 7, 17, 21, 22, 25, 33, 60, 73, 
105, 106, III, 121, 143, 146, 149, 151, 
172, 208, 223, 224, 225, 236, 245, 246, 
247, 248, 279, 280, 299. 

Christ and non-resistance, 249. 

Christ and the adulteress, 268. 

Christ on the rich, 281. 

Christianity, 4, 15, 32, 49, 143, 146, 148, 
150. 

Christmas, 71, 74. 

Churches, 203. 

Classical fairy tales, 50. 

Clifford, W. K., 180. 

Cold and heat, 95. 

Commandments, 19, 21. 

Competition, 239, 241, 248, 265, 285, 
286, 290, 292. 

Complexity, 39, 41, 42. 

Conception of the world, 16. 

Conciliation between science and re- 
ligion, 61. 

Conquest of death, 144. 

Conscience, 54, 55, 75, yy. 

Conservation of matter and energy, 
139. 



312 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 



Conservation of soul-life, 140. 
Co-operation, 291. 
Cope, Prof. E. D., 295. 
Cosmos, 10, 159. 
Cosmos and design, 89. 
Counterfeits, 270. 
Criticism, 51. 

Darwin, 43, 208, 227. 
David, 56, 130, 213, 223. 
David's son, 156. 
Death, 14, 145, 147. 
Death and birth, 159, 160. 
Death and love, 185, 186. 
Death, Conquest of, 144, 155. 
Death, Dread of, 158. 
Death no finality, 180. 
Death the wages of sin, 141. 
Deceptions, 56. 
Dependence, Woman's, 295. 
Design, 84. 

Design and cosmos, 89. 
Devil, Talmud on the, 95, 
Devotion to truth, 60. 
Dilettanteism, 234. 
Direction in evolution, 94. 
Direction of evolution, 95, 98. 
Discussion of ethics, 256. 
Disintegration increasing, 38. 
Disparagement, 258. 
Divine, 42. 

Divinity and nature, 247. 
Dogmas, Abolition of, 29. 
Dogmas and science, 59. 
Dogmatism, 34. 
Doubt and faith, 227, 229. 
Doubt in truth, 9. 
Dreams and ideals, 288. 
Dreams and progress, 288. 
Dualism and monism, 240. 
Duality of truth, 58. 
Duty and work, 150. 
Duty of clergy, 13, 14. 

Easter, 151. 

Ecclesiasticism and liberalism, 205. 

Egg a symbol of resurrection, The, 152. 

Egg, The Easter, 151. 

Ego, 146, 147, 167, 168, 171. 

Ego, No immortality of the, 187. 

Ego, Surrender of the, 172. 



Ego, Surrender of — no annihilation, 

172. 
Egotism, 273. 
Eleusis, 165. 

Emancipation, woman's, 297, 
Enemies, Our — our counterpart, 242. 
Entheism, 97. 
Epicurus on death, 159. 
Errors, 9, 120, 209. 
Errors and truth, 208. 
Esquimaux, 169. 

Eternal youth and immortality, 161. 
Ethical law and knowledge, 81. 
Ethical man, 220. 
Ethical questions and immortality, 

177- 
Ethical religion, 3. 
Ethics, 37. 

Ethics and Bible, 222. 
Ethics and immortality, 154. 
Ethics and pain, 219. 
Ethics, Discussion of, 256. 
Ethics in other parts of the universe, 

218. 
Ethics of altruism wrong, 241. 
Ethics of arithmetic, 81. 
Ethics of evolution, 47. 
Ethics of struggle, 243, 244. 
Ethics of the churches, 204. 
Ethics, The angels and, 274, 275. 
Evil and good, 95. 
Evil and negative magnitudes, 96. 
Evil and pantheism, 94, 
Evolution, 5, 39, 41, 43, 44. 
Evolution and adaptation, 37. 
Evolution and immortality, 176, 179. 
Evolution and intelligence, 83, 
Evolution, Ethics of, 47. 
Evolution, Laws of, 37. 
Evolution not a material and not a 

mechanical process, 39. 
Evolution of life not mechanical, 40. 
Evolution of truth, 33. 

Factors, Principles and, 283, 284. 

Facts, 13. 

Fairyland, 20. 

Fairy tales and truth, 48. 

Faith, 156. 

Faith and doubt, 227, 229. 

Faith in truth, 182, 193. 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 



313 



Feeling, 45. 

Feelings and mind, loi. 

Feel the truth, 53. 

Fiction and truth, 153. 

Fool of the gospel, The, 197. 

Form, The secrets of, 152. 

Free love, 263, 266, 267. 

Freethinkers, Religion wanted among, 

226. 
Free, Thought not, 190. 
Freethought, 189. 
Freethought and authority, 192. 
Freethought, Heroes of, 230. 
Freethought, The God of, 193. 
Freytag, Gustav, 141. 
Fulfillment, 6. 
Fulfillment of the law, 17. 
Future, Religion of the, 147. 

Genesis, 43, 99. 

Germany, The paternal government 

of, 3c6. 
Ghosts, 137, 138, 139, 141, 145. 
Ghost-immortality, 168. 
Ghost-soul, 167, 168, 169, 170. 
God, 19, 21, 23, 79, 80, III, 116, 146, 

210. 
God and nature not identical, 93. 
God a mind? Is, 102. 
God as an inventor, 86. 
God, authority to regulate action, 79, 
God everywhere, 97. 
Godfathers, 14. 
God-idea, 41. 

God immutability of order, 87. 
God is reality, 102. 
God is spirit, 106. 
God, Jahveh, 183. 
God, Manifestations of, 105. 
God not a man, 91. 
God of nature, 80. 
God superhuman, 88. 
God the standard of ethics, 100. 
Goethe, 77, 117, iig, 129, 170, 175, 184, 

211, 221, 262, 274, 280. 
Gold, A curse rests on, 279. 
Goldsmith, Oliver, 270. 
Good and evil, 95. 
Good and truth, 59. 
Gospel, 9, II, 12. 



Gravitation, Proposition to abolish, 

289, 290. 
Growth of soul, 42. 
Guide through life, 46. 
Guyau. on irreligion, i 

Hagen and Riideger, 243. 

Happiness, 148. 

Happiness, pursuit of, 121, 124 

Hated, 9. 

Heat and cold, 95, 

Hedonism, 47. 

Heine, Heinrich, 215. 

Hercules, 118. 

Heroes of freethought, 230. 

Hesiod, 50. 

Heterogeneous, 38. 

Higher life, 3. 

Historical facts, 15. 

Historical religion, 17. 

History of religious progress, 61. 

Holy Ghost, 221. 

Hosmer, 50. 

Homogeneous, 38. 

Honesty, Need of, 235. 

Honesty, Utility of, 269. 

Hosea, 82. 

Humboldt, 221. 

Hume, 127, 230. 

Huxley, 53. 

Huxley on morality, 250. 

Ibsen, Henrik, 137, 138, 141. 

Iconoclast, 19. 

Ideal world, 46. 

Ideals and dreams, 288. 

Ideals of America, 305, 306. 

Idolatry, 87. 

Idols, 80. 

Immortal, 147. 

Immortal, Ideals are, 165. 

Immortal life, 144. 

Immortality, 131, 145, 146, 151, 153, 

154. 159. 160, 167, 169, 170, 171, 173. 
Immortality and eternal youth, 161. 
Immortality and ethical questions, 

177- 
Immortality and ethics, 154. 
Immortality and evolution, 176, 179 
Immortality and sex-relations, 260, 

261. 



314 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 



Immortality and spiritism, 166. 
Immortality and woman, 294. 
Immortality, Belief in, 175, 176. 
Immortality, Continuance of life, 181. 
Immortality, No — of the ego, 187. 
Immutability of order, God, 87. 
Indestructibility, 170. 
Indifference, 64. 

Individual a part of the whole, 20. 
Individual, the, 178. 
Individuality, 135, 136. 
Individuality preserved, 165. 
Inertia, Law of, 25. 
Infidel, 23. 

Infinite, 108, 109, no, in. 
Infinitude and mind, 102, 103. 
Ingersoll, Robert, 209. 
Ingersoll on immortality, 186. 
Intelligence a machine, 86. 
Intelligence, a machine of, 85. 
Intelligence analysed, 83. 
Intelligence and evolution, 83. 
Ironbeard, 19. 
Irreligious age, i. 

Jahveh, 183. 

Jeremiah, 303. 

John the Baptist, 33, 73. 

Joy, Religions of, 148. 

Justice alone insufiicient truth, 56. 

Kant, 44, 172, 230. 

Kingdom of God, 32, 33. 

Kingdom of God, Truth is the, 34. 

King of truth, 34. 

Knowledge and ethical law, 81. 

Lamarck, 44. 

Lasalle, 280. 

Lavoisier, 25. 

Law, 139. 

Laws of evolution, 37. 

Lazarus, Emma, 215. 

Leckey on religion, i. 

Leo X., 231. 

Lessing, 230. 

Letter, 25. 

Liberalism and ecclesiasticism, 205. 

Life, 37. 

Logos, 105, 106. 

Love and death, 185, 186. 



Luther, 31, 61, 144, 145, 164, 207, 209 
225, 230, 231, 232. 

Macauley on the Puritans, 200. 
Machine of intelligence, a, 85. 
Man and woman, 296. 
Man, Ethical, 220. 
Manifestations of God, 105. 
Marriage, 280, 264. 
Matrimony, 14/ 
Maya, 122, 123, 171, 173. 
Mayflower, 201, 308. 
Mediums, 169. 
Mene tekel, 235. 
Metaphysical, 108. 
Metaphysics and morality, 252, 
Migrations of souls, 180. 
Millennium, 292, 309. 
Mind and infinitude, 102, 103. 
Mind a world in ideas, loi. 
Miracles, 19. 
Mistletoe, 72. 
Monism and dualism, 240. 
Monogamy, 264, 265, 266. 
Moral and religious faith, 15. 
Morality, 131. 

Morality active and passive, 273. 
Morality and metaphysics, 252. 
Morality and religion, 254. 
Morality and success, 233. 
Morality and theology, 252. 
Morality and truth, 66. 
Morality, Need of, 236. 
Morality, positive, 274, 275. 
Moses, 43. 

Miiller, F. Max, 108, no, 112. 
Mustard-seed, 156. 
Mutability, 88. 

Mutability and personality, 85. 
Mysticism and truth, 52. 
Mythology, 34, 66, 143, 150, 153. 
Mythology of religion, 20. 
Mythology, Truth in, 120. 

Napoleon, 274. 

Nation, 58. 

Nationalism, 291, 292. 

Natural laws of social growth, 285. 

Natural selection, 38. 

Nature, 75. 

Nature and divinity, 247. 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 



315 



Nature and God not identical, 93. 

Nature immortal, 2. 

New, I. 

New ethics, 5. 

New religion, 3, 12, 26, 

Nibelungen saga, 243, 279. 

Nirvana, 121, 123, 125, 144, 171. 

Non-resistance, 245. 

Non-risistance and Christ, 249. 

Non-resistance, Struggle and, 248. 

Observation, 33. 

Omniscience, 104. 

Open Court, The, 58, 60, 61. 

Order, 10. 

Order and struggle, 239. 

Ormuzd and Ahriman, 94. 

Orthodox, 19, 23, 33. 

Orthodox and agnostic, The, 204. 

Orthodoxy of science, 207. 

Ovine Morality, 250, 251. 

Paganism, 104, 105. 

Paganism and personal God, 88. 

Pain and ethics, 219. 

Pain, diminution of, 218. 

Palm tree. The, 282. 

Panem et circenses, 293. 

Pantheism, 90. 

Pantheism, and evil, 94. 

Pantheism, The blind side of, 93. 

Parables, 66. 

Parables, Meaning in, 120. 

Paralogism, 167. 

Paralogisms, 113. 

Past, 6. 

Pastor, 13. 

Paul, 147, 164, 225. 

Personal God and paganism, 88. 

Personal intelligence laws, 84. 

Personalities, Variety of, 135. 

Personality, 88. 

Personality and mutability, 85. 

Phlogiston, 25. 

Pilate, 33. 

Pilgrims, The, 204. 

Pious fraud, 176. 

Pleasure, 26. 

Pleasure, Craving for, 140. 

Pleasures, The zest of, 276. 

Pledged to truth, 12. 



Polygamy, 265. 

Poor and rich, 276-279, 299, 300, 302. 

Positivism, 108. 

Positivism and theism, 109. 

Power and truth, loi. 

Power, Religion ceased to be, i. 

Practical, i. 

Preservation of personality, 181. 

Preservation of the individual soul, 

178. 
Principles and factors, 283, 284. 
Problem, 216. 

Progress, 35, 36, 37. 42, 244, 248. 
Progress and dreams, 288. 
Progress and truth, 194. 
Prometheus, 117, 118, 119. 
Pseudo-wisdom, 55. 
Puritans, 164, 200, 202. 
Pursuit of happiness, 121, 124. 

Questions, 213, 214, 216. 

Readjustment, 18. 

Realistic, i, 3, 

Reality and the ideal, 288. 

Reformation, 145. 

Reformers, Retrogressive, 37. 

Regulate conduct, 16. 

Religion, 10, 35, 106, 112, 155, 156, 157, 
200, 253. 

Religion a fairy-tale, 49. 

Religion and morality, 254. 

Religion and power, 202. 

Religion and scienc, 129, 206, 210, 211. 

Religion a popularised system of eth- 
ics, 26. 

Religion ceased to be power, i. 

Religion, Historical, 17. 

Religion, Object of, 130. 

Religion of facts, 66. 

Religion of freethought, 189. 

Religion of the future, 147. 

Religion of joy, 148. 

Religion wanted among freethinkers, 
226. 

Religion ? What is, 60. 

Religious and moral faith, 15. 

Religious nature of evolution, 44. 

Religious revolution, 4. 

Republic, 307. 



3i6 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 



Republic and caste, 303. 

Resignation, 143, 147. 

Resurrection, 151. 

Resurrection of the body, 182. 

Resurrection, The egg a symbol of, 152. 

Retrogressive adaptation, 38. 

Retrogressive reformers, 37. 

Revelation, 75. 

Revelation and truth, 76. 

Revelations, 76. 

Reverence, 30. 

Reverence for the merits, 6, 

Revision, 28. 

Revolution, 5, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 

303. 304. 
Rich and poor, 276-279, 299, 300, 302. 
Right and truth, 47. 
Right direction, 36. 
Righteousness, 76. 
Rudiger and Hagen, 243. 



Saccharine religiosity, 251. 

Sacrifices, 26. 

Salter, 223, 225. 

Salvation, 163. 

Salvation of souls, 127. 

Sausara, 121, 123. 

Saviour, 74. 

Scepticism, 227, 228. 

Scherr, Johannes, 163, 164. 

Schiller, 80, 93, 173, 210. 

Schiller quotation, 69. 

Schiller's Xenion, 188. 

Schilling on revolution, George, 300, 
307. 

Schoolmen, 58. 

Science, 5, 9, 15, 55, 106. 

Science and dogmas, 59. 

Science and religion, 129, 206, 210, 
211. 

Scriptures, 75, 76. 

Search for truth, 112. 

Selection, 38. 

Selection in the struggle for exist- 
ence, 237. 

Self-preservation, Sexual relations, 
and, 260. 

Sexual ethics, 260. 

Sexual relations and self-preserva- 
tion, 260. 



Shakespeare, Quotation from, 170, 

281. 
Sheep, allegory, The, 250. 
Sheep, The simile of a, 245. 
Signs of the time, 2. 
Simplicity, 42. 
Sin, Death the wages of, 141. 
Social growth, Natural laws of, 285. 
Socialism and anarchism, 283, 285, 

286, 287. 
Socrates, 208. 
Solace in death, 14. 
Solomon's denial of immortality, 175. 
Soloviefif, 32. 

Son of man. The, 119, 120. 
Sophisms, 258. 
Soul, 42, 128, 132. 
Soul-life, Conservation of, 140. 
Soul-life, Origin of, 40. 
Soul of the Soul, The, 134. 
Soul, Preservation of the individual, 

178. 
Soul, The human element of the, 284. 
Soul, The unity of the, 133. 
Souls, Hoarding up, 165. 
Souls, Migration of, 180. 
Souls of the past. The, 164. 
Souls of the slain and the victor. The, 

242. 
Spencer, 38, 39, 46. 
Spencer, Quotation from, 264. 
Spinoza, 230, 247. 
Spirit, 25. 
Spirit, God is, 106. 
Spiritism and immortality, 166. 
Spiritism, its dearth of ideas, 169. 
Spiritual life, 46. 
Standard of ethics, God the, 100. 
Strife, 240. , 

Strongest, 38. 

Struggle and non-resistance, 248. 
Struggle and order, 239. 
Struggle and progress, 241. 
Struggle, Ethics of, 243. 
Struggle for existence. Selection in 

the, 237. 
Struggle for life, 45, 291. 
Struggle, the backbone of man, 244. 
Struggle, The ethics of, 244. 
Success, 4, 6. 
Success and morality, 233. 



HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 



317 



Superhuman God, 88. 

Suoernatural, 19. 

Superstition, 210. 

Superstitions of science, 207. 

Sursufti, 44, 97. 

Survival of the fittest, 237. 

Survive, 38. 

Swift, Morrison I. , 298, 299, 302. 

Talmud on the devil, 95. 

Tat twam asi, 179. 

Tauler, 173. 

Tempter, the, 55. 

Test of religion, 35. 

Theism and positivism, 109, 

Theism not wrong, 90. 

Themis, 117. 

Theology and morality, 252. 

Thetis, 119. 

Thinker a power, The, 63. 

Thought, In the empire of, 25. 

Thought not free, 190. 

Tolerance, Misinterpretation of, igo, 

191. 
Tolstoi", Count, 246. 
Treviranus, 44. 
Trickery, 56, 233, 275. 
Trust in truth, 192. 
Truth, 8, 10, II, 12, 42, 47, 56, 76, 78, 

120, 206, 232. 
Truth and controversies, 256. 
Truth and errors, 208. 
Truth and fairy-tales, 48. 
Truth and fiction, 153. 
Truth and freethought, 190. 
Truth and good, 59. 
Truth and morality, 66. 
Truth and mysticism, 52. 
Truth and power, loi. 
Truth and progress, 194. 
Truth and revelation, 76. 
Truth and right, 47. 
Truth appears to destroy, 182. 
Truth, Devotion to, 60. 
Truth in mythology, 120. 
Truth is one, 20. 



Truth is the kingdom of God, 34. 
Truth objective, 191, 192. 
Truth of the God-idea, The, 93. 
Truth the supreme judge, 31. 
Truth, Trust in, 275. 
Truth, Unity of, 58. 
Truth useful, 176. 
Truth ? What is, 66. 
Truth will conquer, 65, 67, 

Unity of the soul. The, 133. 

Unity of truth, 58. 

Universe, Is the— ethical, 217. 

Unknowable, 40. 

Useful, Truth, 176. 

Utility of honesty, 269. 

Utopia, 283. 

Variety of personalities, 135. 
Vicar of Wakefield, The, 270, 271. 
Vice its curse, 139. 
Victor, The souls of the slain and the 

242. 
Virgil, 280. 
Virtue, 38, 273. 
Voice crying in the wilderness, 12. 

Watt, James, 288. 

Weakness and morality, 245. 

Weismann, 38. 

Wheelbarrow, 224. 

White House, 307. 

Whole, 54. 

Winnow the errors of the past, 92. 

Wolff, Caspar Friedrich, 44. 

Woman and immortality, 294. 

Woman and man, 296. 

Words religion, God and soul, 24. 

Work and duty, 150. 

World a cosmos, 41. 

Worship of a personal God, The, 87. 

Ygdrasil, 72. 
Yule-tide, 71, 73. 

Zeus, 118. 



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The international character of the magazine appears also in 
a rich review of English and foreign publications. Each number 
contains a synopsis of the most important books and periodicals, 
American as well as European, in the philosophical, ethical, psy- 
chological, and physiological fields. 

The Monist represents that philosophical conception which 
is at present known by the name of " Monism." Monism, as it is 
represented in The Monist, is in a certain sense no^ a new phi- 
losophy, it does not come to revolutionise the world and overthrow 
the old foundations of science. On the contrary, it is the outcome 
and result of science in its maturest shape. 

The term "Monism" is often used in the sense of one-sub- 
stance-theory that either mind alone or matter alone exists. Such 
theories are better called Henism. 

Monism is not "that doctrine" (as Webster has it) " which 
refers all phenomena to a single ultimate constituent or agent." 
Of such an "ultimate constituent or agent " we know nothing, and 
it will be difficult to state whether there is any sense in the mean- 
ing of the phrase " a single ultimate constituent or agent." 



Monism is much simpler and less indefinite. Monism means 
that the whole of Reality, i. e. everything that is, constitutes one 
inseparable and indivisible entirety. Monism accordingly is a 
unitary conception of the world. It always bears in mind that our 
words are abstracts representing parts or features of the One and 
All, and not separate existences. Not only are matter and mind, 
soul and body abstracts, but also such scientific terms as atoms 
and molecules, and also religious terms such as God and world. 

Our abstracts, if they are true, represent realities, i. e. parts, 
or features, or relations of the world, that are real, but they never 
represent things in themselves, absolute existences, for indeed 
there are no such things as absolute entities. The All being one 
interconnected whole, everything in it, every feature of it, every 
relation among its parts has sense and meaning and reality only if 
considered with reference to the whole. In this sense we say that 
monism is a view of the world ss a unity. 

The principle of Monism is the unification or systematisation 
of knowledge, i. e. of a description of facts. In other words : There 
is but one truth, two or several truths may represent different and 
even complementary aspects of the one and sole truth, but they 
can never come into contradiction. Wherever a contradiction be- 
tween two statements appears, both of which are regarded as true, 
it is sure that there must be a mistake somewhere. The ideal of 
science remains a methodical and systematic unification of state- 
ments of facts, which shall be exhaustive, concise, and free from 
contradictions — in a word the ideal of science is Monism. 

Monism, as represented by The Monist, is a statement of facts, 
and in so far as it is a statement of facts, this Monism is to be called 
Positivism. This Positivism however is different from Comtean 
Positivism, which latter would better be called agnosticism (see The 
AToitist, Vol. ii, No. i, p. 133-137). There is a mythology of science 
which is no less indispensable in the realm of investigation than it 
is in the province of religion, but we must not forget that it is a 
means only to an end, the ideal of scientific inquiry and of the mo- 
nistic philosophy being and remaining a simple statement of facts. 

Although the editorial management of The Monist takes a 
decided and well defined position with respect to the most im- 
portant philosophical questions of the day, its pages are neverthe- 
less not restricted to the presentation of any one special view or 
philosophy. On the contrary, they are open to contributors of 
divergent opinions and the most hostile world-conceptions, dual- 
istic or otherwise, are not excluded. 



PRESS NOTICES ON "THE MONIST." 



"The establishment of a new philosophical quarterly which 
may prove a focus for all the agitation of thought that struggles 
to-day to illuminate the deepest problems with light from modern 
science, is an event worthy of particular notice." — The Nation, 
New York. 

"The articles are of the highest grade." — The Inter Ocean, 
Chicago. 

"No one who wishes to keep abreast of the most widely ex- 
tended and boldly pushed forward line of philosophically consid- 
ered science, can do better than attempt to master the profound 
yet lucid studies set forth in The Monisty — Ellis Thurtell, in Ag- 
nostic Jotirnal. 

" The Monist will compete most dangerously with the leading 
magazines of our own couiitry . . . . 77^^ Monist is decidedly the 
morning star of religious liberalism and philosophical culture." — 
Amos Waters in Watts' s Literary Guide, London. 

"... .demands and will repay the attention of philosophical 
inquirers and thinkers." — Home Journal, New York. 

"It will take rank among the best publications of its class. 
We hope that it will receive the support to which its merits cer- 
tainly entitle it." — Evening Journal, Chicago. 

" It is both a solid and a handsome quarterly." — BrooklynEagle. 

"The periodical is one of the best of the solid publications of 
the kind now before the public. The articles are substantial, 
clever, and catching in subject." — Brighton Guardian. 

"It is a high-class periodical." — Philadelphia Press. 

"One of the most solid serials of the times. All will be in- 
clined to give a cordial welcome to this addition to scientific and 
philosophical literature." — Manchester Examiner. 

"The articles are admirable." — Glasgozv Herald. 

"The subjects are treated with marked ability." — Ulster 
Gazette, Armaugh. 

"A desideratum in the department of philosophical litera- 
ture." — Boston Transcript. 

"We welcome it to our homes and firesides." — Sa7i Francisco 
Call. 

" Its merit is so exceptional that it is likely to gain a national, 
even a European recognition, before it has gained a local one. It 
deserves to be widely known." — The Dial, Chicago. 



"We very heartily welcome this quarterly as a great help in 
the investigation of psychological questions." — Boston Herald. 

''The Open Court and The Monist are unusually vv^orthy of per- 
usal by thinkers in the various departments of knowledge and re- 
search " — Dubuque Trade Joitrnal. 

"It is filled from cover to cover with choice reading matter by 
some of the most noted home and foreign metaphysical psycho- 
logical thinkers and writers of the age." — Medical Free Press, In- 
dianapolis. 

' ' Every reader and investigator will find The Monist a most 
valuable and attractive periodical." Milling IVo-dd, Buffalo. 

" The reader will, by an attentive perusal of this most promis- 
ing magazine, easily bring himself an courant with the best modern 
work on psychological and biological questions. The magazine de- 
serves to take that established and authoritative position which we 
very cordially wish on its behalf." — Literary World, London. 

" This magazine will be received with eagerness in the closet 
of many a student." Hampshire Chronicle, Winchester. 

' ' The Monist is first-cIass, and numbers amongst its contrib- 
utors the most eminent students of science and philosophy in 
England and America. There is no better journal of philosophy in 
England." — Echo, London. 

" Those with a taste for "solid " reading will find their desire 
gratified here." — Leicester Chronicle. 

" The October number of The Monist covers a wide area, and 
if it had no other claim upon popular favor than that of variety 
that in itself ought to be a sufficient guarantee to ensure it success. 
But it possesses the additional recommendation of being ably and 
brightly written." — Morning News, Belfast, 

"The journal numbers amongst its contributors the most 
eminent students of science and philosophy in England and Amer- 
ica." — Sussex Advertiser. 

"In this number The Mo7iist \\d,s sustained the high reputa- 
tion of the three preceding issues. Two things are necessary to- 
constitute a good quarterly, able contributors, and a live editor 
The Mojiist has both. The articles are all on living questions, 
practical as well as theoretical. If 77',? Monist sustains the posi- 
tion already reached, it will be indispensable to every student who 
wishes to keep pace with current thought." — The Canadian ALeth- 
odist Quarterly, 



PUBLICATIONS 

OF THE 

OPEN COURT PUB. CO 

i6g-i75 LA SALLE STREET, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. 



THREE INTRODUCTORY LECTURES ON 
THE SCIENCE OF THOUGHT. By F. 
MaxMuller. (Sole Agents in England: Long- 
mans, Green, & Co.) 

I. The Simplicity of Language ; 2. The Identity of Language and Thought; 
and 3. The Simplicity of Thought. Cloth, 75 Cents. 

Prof. F. Mas Miiller sets forth his view of the identity of Language and 
Thought, which is a further development of LudwigNoire's theory that " man 
thinks because he speaks." Language is thought, no thought is possible with- 
out some symbols, be they spoken or written words. 

THREE LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF 
LANGUAGE. By Prof. F. Max Muller. 

With a Supplement " MY PREDECESSORS." Cloth, 75 Cents. 

Prof. F. Max Muller points out that the difference between man and animal 
isdue to language, yet there is no mystery in language. He shows the origin of 
language as developed from the clamor concomitans of social beings engaged 
in common work. Thought is thicker than blood, and the bonds of the same 
language and the same ideas are stronger than of family and race relation. 

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ATTENTION. By Th. 

RiBOT. (Sole Agents in England : Longmans, 

Green, & Co.) Authorised Translation. Cloth, 75 Cents. 

THE DISEASES OF PERSONALITY. By Th. 

RiBOT. Authorised translation. Cloth, 75 Cents. 

The works of Th. Ribot explain the growth and nature of man's soul. 
The former book, "The Psychology of Attention " is an exposition of the 
mechanism of concentrating the will upon a special object, thus showing the 
cause of the unity of the soul and throwing light upon the nature of the ego. 
The latter book, " The Diseases of Personality " elucidates the hierarchical 
character of man's psychic life which rises from simple beginnings to a com- 
plex structure. The growth of personality is shown by an analysis of its 
diseases, and its evolution is set forth in the instances of its dissolution. 



THE PSYCHIC LIFE OF MICRO-ORGAN- 
ISMS. By Alfred Binet. (Sole Agents in 
England: Longmans, Green, & Co.) Authorised 

Translation. Cloth, 75 Cents. 

A special fascination is attached to the wonders of the world of psychic life 
in a drop of water. It is astonishing how much these tiny creatures behave 
like ourselves ! 

ON DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS. New Studies 
in Experimental Psychology. By Alfred Binet. 

Price, 50 Cents. 

Our conscious life is only part of our soul's existence. There are sub- 
conscious and even unconscious states and actions taking place in man which 
are of a psychic nature. M. A. Binet gives an account of his experiments in 
this field. 

EPITOMES OF THREE SCIENCES. 

1. COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY. By Prof. H. Oldenberg. 

2. COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. By Prof. J. Jastrow. 

3. OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY. By Prof. C. H. Cornill. Cloth, 
75 Cents. 

The present state of our knowledge in these three sciences, so important 
for religious thought, is presented in this book by three specialists. 

THE ETHICAL PROBLEM. By Dr. Paul Carus. 

Three Lectures Delivered at the Invitation of the Board of Trustees be- 
fore the Society for Ethical Culture of Chicago, in June, 1890. Cloth, 50 Cents. 

The Ethical Problem is a criticism of the position of the societies for eth- 
ical culture. They propose to preach ethics pure and simple without com- 
mitting themselves to any world-conception of religion or philosophy. It is 
shov/n here that our views of morality always depend upon our view of life : 
every definition of good presupposes a certain world-conception. 

THE SOUL OF MAN. An Investigation of the 
Facts of Physiological and Experimental Psy- 
chology. By Dr. Paul Carus. 

With 152 illustrative cuts and diagrams. 474 pp. Cloth, S3. 00. 

This book elucidates first the philosophical problem of mind, showing 
that mind is not motion but the subjective state of awareness accompanying 
certain motions of the brain. It describes the physiological facts of the ner- 
vous system and the experiments of hypnotism, and after a discussion of the 
Nature of Thought, Consciousne s. Pleasure, and Pain, it presents the eth- 
ical and religious conclusions derived from these considerations. 



THE IDEA OF GOD. By Dr. Paul Carus. 

A disquisition upon the development of the idea of God. Paper, 15 Cents. 

The different conceptions of God (Polytheism, Monotheism, Pantheism, 
and Atheism) are discussed and God is defined as the moral law of the world 
which is recognised as the authority in accord with which we have to regulate 
our conduct. This view is called Entheism. 

FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS. By Dr. Paul 
Carus. (Sole Agents in England: Longmans, 

Green, & Co.) Second Edition. Revised and Enlarged. 
Cloth, $1.50. 

Monistic Positivism, as presented in Fundamental Problems, starts from 
facts, and aims at a unitary conception of facts. Knowledge is a description 
of facts in mental symbols. Sensations are the data of experience yet the 
formal aspect of facts is recognised in its all-important significance. Agnos" 
ticism is rejected, and the ethical importance of a positive world-conception 
insisted upon. The appendix consists of a number of discussions in which 
the author considers all the objections made by critics of many different 
standpoints. 

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. By Dr. Paul Carus. 

Gilt Top. Elegantly Bound. $1.50. 

Short ethical exhortations and sermon-like discussions of religious, moral, 
social, and political topics made from a standpoint which might briefly be 
characterised The Religion of Science. 

WHEELBARROW. ARTICLES AND DISCUS- 
SIONS ON THE LABOR QUESTION. 

Cloth, $1.00 

This book is written by Gen. M. M. Trumbull and contains the very life- 
blood of his experiences. It is a collection of articles and discussions on the 
labor problem, and as the author has worked for many years as an unskilled 
laborer, he has a right to be heard and indeed his views are liberal as well as 
just and are nowhere lacking in a healthy moral spirit. 

THE LOST MANUSCRIPT. A Novel. By Gustav 

FrEYTAG. Authorised translation. Elegantly bound, 84.00. In 
one volume bound in cloth, good paper, $1.00. 

The author writes as a motto for the American edition ; 

"A noble human life does not end on earth with death. It continues in 
the minds and the deeds of friends, as well as in the thoughts and the activity 
of the nation." 

Gustav Freytag did not write his novel with the intention of teaching psy- 
chology or preaching ethics. But the impartial description of life does teach 
ethics, and every poet is a psychologist in the sense that he portrays human 
souls. This is pre-eminently true of Gustav Freytag and his novel " The Lost 
Manuscript." 



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